With International Women in Sport Day falling on Wednesday 24 January this year, Touch Luxembourg wants to celebrate and communicate the fact that over 40% of it’s licensed players are women; it is supporting RCL Lightning's Ladies Night on Tuesday 23 January at 19:30 at the Boy Konen sports ground in Cessange.
Most people associate rugby as a male-dominated sport; however, this is simply not true. Rugby comes in many forms from the highly physical codes of League and Union to the lower contact versions such as Touch. With the tackle replaced by a simple Touch, the accessibility of the sport to all ages and genders has meant that it has grown especially in Australia, New Zealand and England to the extent there are over 700,000 players in Australia and 100,000 in the UK.
Touch Luxembourg, through its main club RCL Lightning, has focused on developing its juniors such that there are over 40 U16 touch players in the RCL Ecole of which over 27 are girls. This critical mass of female players within a safe club environment has allowed many of the older juniors to gain competitive experience in the Belgium National Mixed League. Its goal in the coming years is to have a junior national team playing in an international U15 mixed team, leading to women's and mixed teams playing in international competitions. Ironically, the success of their girls will be helped by overcoming current biases in the Luxembourg sporting community and recruiting more boys. As counterintuitive as that might seem, the mixed route creates a better sporting dynamic for many young people.
Women can play in Luxembourg Ville at the Annual RCL Corporate Touch League where it is a rule that over half of the players on the pitch at any time must be female. This, combined with the positive influence of the growth in junior girls that is starting to spill over into adult women, results in the RCL Lightning Club having just over 25% female athletes. At the newly formed Terres Rouges Touch club in Dudelange, the percentages might be slightly higher as partners, mothers and daughters join together to play in Dudelange giving it a real ‘family’ feel.
“We feel that the key to this success has been the hard work of our club coaches at RCL and Terres Rouges to create a safe positive environment where female players of all ages can compete on an equal level to all the other players” said Nick Frank, President of Touch Luxembourg.
Those interested can come and join RCL Lightning’s next Ladies Night on Tuesday 23 January at 19:30 at the Boy Konen sports ground in Cessange. Those who would like to try out touch rugby can reach out to Rugby Club de Luxembourg (email: info@rcl.lu) or Terres Rouges in Dudelange (email: info@rctr.lu).
For further details, see https://touch-luxembourg.lu
Touch Luxembourg is the national association for touch rugby in Luxembourg that aims to make Touch the premier mixed participation sport in Luxembourg. Due to its low physical contact, its reliance on speed of thought and teamwork, touch is the most inclusive of sports played by all genders, often in mixed teams with a wide range of ages and sporting abilities. Created in the 1960s as a non-contact form of Rugby league, it is a fast & dynamic 6-a-side game rolling substitutions played on a 50x70m pitch. Adults and Juniors can play at RCL Lightning and Terre Rouge Touch clubs.
