SCHEDULE

09:15-10:15am Registration

All teams to gather and report for registration in the Main Clubhouse conservatory. This County Festival is not being run as a competition, but as a Festival of Rugby. We ask that clubs provide a GMS generated list of players with their RFU registration numbers. All teams must be booked in by 10:15am.

10:30 Coaches Meeting

There will be a coaches and referee briefing at 10:30am sharp in the clubhouse to explain the format of the day and answer any questions. Clubs are expected to provide a referee for each team entering and a schedule for the referees will be arranged at the coaches meeting.

11:00

Festival

The first games are due to start at 11:00am sharp. We are expecting 18 clubs for each event with around 30 teams in both the Under 7s and Under 8s. We will be running each age group in four pools. A detailed schedule of matches is attached. PLEASE NOTE, THIS IS SUBJECT TO CHANGE AND WILL BE CONFIRMED AT THE COACHES MEETING. We would expect to have around 5 or 6 matches for each team giving around an hour of rugby spread over the day. Our main aim will be to maximise the playing time for all participants, within the RFU guidelines. To achieve this, we plan for each match to be 8 minutes long with a 4 minute gap between each match.

Due to the number of participants, there will occasionally be gaps of up to an hour between matches. During this time, we have arranged some games to help keep the children entertained behind the posts.

3:30pm-4pm Festival Close

We are aiming to be finished between 3:30pm and 4pm – this may run late due to the numbers of teams involved. Timings will be given on the day – please can you ensure your teams are ready to start at the designated times and that games run for the allocated time so that we can try and keep on schedule as much as possible.