TackleLondon is a connected pathway. A young person can start with zero rugby experience in a school PE lesson and, over months or years, find a lasting home in their local community club. We believe rugby is the perfect way to build those connections. Through the sport, young people find mentors who support them, encourage them, and help them believe in themselves. Here’s how each stage works, and why it’s built this way.
The whole point is momentum. A young person who spends more time in a positive, structured environment spends less time unsupervised, and every stage exists to make it easier to keep going to the next one. There’s no test to pass and no formal selection process between stages. Progression is open to anyone who wants it.
Stage One: In-School Rugby
What it is:
Free, weekly, whole-class rugby sessions delivered in curriculum time by Matt Ratana Rugby Foundation coaches – PE-style, no experience required, no cost to the school or family. We also arrange and host inter-school tournaments, enabling participating schools to mix in a collaborative , team environment; building friendships across diverse backgrounds.
What’s actually happening underneath:
This is where trust starts. The same coach shows up every week – for a lot of young people, an adult being reliably present isn’t something they can take for granted. Sessions keep the focus on the team, not on any individual pupil, so nobody feels singled out or flagged.
Who it’s for:
Whichever year group or class a partner school identifies as most likely to benefit; some schools run it across a whole year, others focus on a single class. There’s no fixed age band; we’re guided by the school.
Stage Two: After-School Sessions
What it is:
Regular games, training sessions and inter-school tournaments, open to any pupil who’s taken part in in-school sessions – optional, and free.
What’s actually happening underneath:
This is where a young person starts choosing to be there. Inter-school tournaments deliberately mix young people from different school communities; often their first experience of building relationships outside their own school. Some pupils begin taking on visible, non-playing roles here too, such as junior coaching roles. This indicates an early sign of the personal agency and confidence the later stages build on.
Why this stage significantly matters:
This is where engagement can quietly drop off. We treat conversion from in-school to after-school as one of our most important indicators – not because attendance is the goal, but because it’s the clearest sign the trust-building from Stage One worked.
Stage Three: The Matt Ratana Rugby Foundation (MRRF) Academy
What it is:
Additional weekly sessions at a higher performance level, run independently by the Matt Ratana Rugby Foundation, with our after-school club provision as the feeder pathway.
What’s actually happening underneath:
The Academy is designed to build pride and aspiration – without ever functioning as an exclusive elite tier. There’s no trial and no cut. Coaches and teachers actively encourage engaged young people to join through a letter of invitation, but the Academy is promoted openly to anyone interested.
Older Academy and after-school participants are encouraged to lead by example: showing younger players what respect, effort and friendship look like in practice, the same values these sessions are built to teach. Some go on to become junior coaches themselves.
Stage Four: Community Rugby Clubs
What it is:
A lasting home in a local rugby club; the stage that carries a young person’s involvement in sport beyond the point where most young people’s involvement stops.
What’s actually happening underneath:
Sport England has found that activity levels drop off sharply for 16-24 year olds, more sharply than in any other age group – the exact point most structured, school-linked sport disappears from a young person’s life. Community clubs are TackleLondon’s answer to that gap: familiar, already-trusted provision that’s still there once school ends, rather than something a young person has to go and find on their own.
Some young people who reach this stage go on to return themselves – as coaches, mentors or contributors to the next group coming through.
Our pathway allows community sport to become a real, reachable option – one they’ve had every opportunity to grow into.
TackleLondon passionately believes that rugby provides the ideal environment to deliver positively influential mentoring and access to trusted adult relationships. We are also strongly committed to playing our part in addressing inequality of opportunity, with the aim of contributing to systematic change towards a fairer society.
In both cases our ultimate goal is to empower the next generation of mentors and leaders, by enabling all young people with the confidence and motivation to take ownership of their futures and achieve their full potential.
Every stage shares the same underlying mechanism: the same coaches, showing up consistently, trained to notice what’s going on with a young person and respond to it. Take that away, and this is just free rugby. Keep it in place, and it’s a mental health and inclusion model that happens to use rugby as its vehicle.
“Having a team with people from more than one school, I think, is more diverse because you’ve got people coming from different areas. It’s a huge leveler. It encourages young people to work together, problem-solve, to not make assumptions about one another.”
-Dr. Amy Atkinson, Education and Schools Manager, TackleLondon
Annastazie's Story
“If I’ve had like, a bad day or a bad week, I can come to rugby and I can play and I can have fun, and it will just make like the rest of the week better.”
For Annastazie, rugby has been more than just a sport, it’s been a pathway to confidence, connection, and a brighter future. She’s not alone. Of the 4,528 TackleLondon has engaged:
- 1,378 young people showed tangible improvements in mental health and wellbeing
- 1,290 improved their engagement in school
- 1,327 demonstrated improved relationships
- All partner schools reported a clear impact on general student wellbeing