News

Over the last year Touch has grown massively in Cornwall, since the autumn of 2019 the number of clubs in the county have more than doubled and, according to Lexie Williams, they are looking to expand even further moving into the 2021 season. Truro Trojans, Bodmin Ladies Touch Rugby and Falmouth Touch Rugby have all benefitted from having close ties with local rugby union clubs ...

On #TimeToTalk Day (Thursday, February 4th), England Touch is focusing on positive mental health. Our friends at UK Coaching have launched an updated version of the popular e-Learning course, Mental Health Awareness in Sport and Physical Activity. UK Coaching, which partnered with Mind, the mental health charity, and Sport England, has reduced the cost of the course by over 30 ...

The England Touch Association (ETA) and the British Heart Foundation (BHF) have announced a new charity partnership. The foundations were laid at the start of lockdown 2 in November, when the #TouchMyHeart 28-day challenge of Touch Rugby skills and fitness activities got hundreds of Touch Rugby players off their feet across the country and raised nearly £2,500 for the BHF. This ...

The 2021 England Touch Association Annual General Meeting will be held on Sunday, March 7th, between 9:30am and 12noon. As with last year, the 2021 AGM will be held via Zoom, with further details to be announced closer to the time. The ETA is seeking two new Non-Executive Directors to help formulate and oversee the delivery of the Association's Growing the Game strategy for 202 ...

England Touch Association (ETA) Chair Mark Croston has welcomed the new Sport England Strategy after it was launched earlier yesterday (Tuesday, January 26th). “Sport England’s vision to put sport and physical activity at the heart of every community over the next 10 years is something that we are also passionate about at England Touch,” he says. “With Touch Rugby needing nothi ...

England Touch Chief Executive Chris Simon has thanked a number of volunteers who have recently stepped down from the Association’s management group. Julia Kang (Disclosure and Barring Manager), Mark Aldous (Accounts Manager), Nick Dobbin (Lead Sports Scientist) and Jon McNaught (Company Secretary) have all given their time to England Touch, helping to make the Association the p ...

Following this evening's announcement by the Prime Minister, England Touch has issued the following advice to all clubs and individuals. As of this evening (Mon 04/01/21) all team-based Touch activity must now cease. This applies to clubs and groups of friends across England and includes group fitness sessions and ball skill work, as well as training and matches. Any fitness co ...

England Touch is positively looking ahead to a 2021 season, and we are looking to establish a consultation group with as broad a cross-section of clubs as possible. This is to try and facilitate a competition structure which meets the needs of clubs at all stages of their development, from those which are starting out all the way up to those which are well established on the do ...

As 2020 draws to a close, we caught up with Mark Croston (Chair), Chris Simon (Chief Executive), Ben Powell (High Performance Director) and Sammie Phillips (National Development Officer) to reflect on the last 12 months and to let us know what they expected and hoped for in 2021. CHRIS: I don’t think my first 12 months in the job could have presented much more of a challenge, b ...

At the start of the second lockdown in early November #TouchMyHeart was barely a glint in the eye. Four weeks later and hundreds of Touch players across the country had been active and honed their skills, with thousands of pounds being raised for the British Heart Foundation in the process. Twenty-seven Touch clubs formally joined the campaign as far afield as Canterbury, Newca ...