State School Rugby at the Top of School's Rugby
By JP
March 17 2026
Read this article this morning and felt it was worth getting it out there in full. There is no argument that Rugby Union needs sate schools to be involved in the growth and quality of Rugby Union in England.
The problem has always been how do you do that!? Here is a possible solution, but it takes time and huge committment.
N.S.B. The Northampton School for Boys 1st XV are looking to add the Continental Tyres Cup to the Daily Mail Trophy they won earlier this season
Next, they head to the gym for a 30-minute strength and conditioning session, before grabbing a quick breakfast, changing into their school uniform and heading to their first lesson.
This is just the start of a typical week for students who play rugby at Northampton School for Boys, also known as NSB, who are attempting to win a schools league and cup double in rugby union this season.
They have recently been crowned the best rugby school in England, finishing top in the Daily Mail Trophy, a merit-table competition played during the autumn term by some of the biggest senior schools in the country, many of which are private, such as renowned rugby nurseries Sedbergh and Wellington College.
As the first state-school team to finish top in the history of the competition, which kicked off in 2013, NSB are bucking the trend. According to Department for Education statistics, in the 2024-25 academic year, 6.4% of pupils in England attended independent schools. Meanwhile, 26 members (63%) of England's wider 2026 Six Nations squad of 41 players went to independent fee-paying schools.
NSB are hoping to complete the double this season when they play Epsom College in the Under-18 Continental Tyres Cup final at Twickenham on 19 March, while they have also reached the national schools cup final in two other age groups.
The school has 19 players in Northampton Saints' under-18 academy, another 21 players in the under-16 foundation stage, and has seven under-18 internationals. Past NSB players include England internationals Steve Thompson, Courtney Lawes and Ollie Sleightholme.
"The culture here is what stands out," said Kai Campbell, one of the players.
"Everything here is earned. At private schools the facilities are provided, but here there are no silver spoons, we have to put the work in."
Prop Aidan Reid - one of English rugby's rising stars and in the current England Under-18 squad - moved from fee-paying Bedford School to NSB a few years ago.
"We don't have the facilities, but we have coaches and parents that care, who ultimately want to be the best and compete," Reid said.
"We have the desire and we back ourselves over any team. State-schoolers can compete."
Performance on a budget
NSB (in red and blue) beat fellow state school Campion in the semi-final of the Continental Tyres Schools Cup
NSB's financial resources are also tightly controlled.
Coaches are not paid and the school has had to work hard to raise money to pay for transport, kit and equipment, attracting support from local businesses who supply items at cost price.
Director of rugby Phil Beaumont says the annual budget for rugby is "well below" £50,000.
"Anything that brings a slight advantage will make a difference, whether that's someone donating tape, our shirts being sponsored, parents dropping off for fixtures," he added.
"That way, we can alleviate some of the financial implications and make our programme sustainable. Just because you're at state school doesn't mean you should have less of an opportunity."
NSB has 1,700 students, ranging from 11-18 years old, with girls joining in the sixth form.
About 220 boys arrive in their first year (Year 7), many of whom have been playing for local clubs in Northampton from an early age.
The school has joined forces with the clubs to improve standards across age groups and relies on the goodwill of parents and coaches.
"This has been a 10-year project and community led," said Beaumont.
"It starts with high-quality coaching. We have 40 parents and coaches already coaching at our local clubs and use their expertise. They are our volunteers.
"We have four high-quality coaches per age group and generate multiple teams, which pushes players to be better. We layer that with competitive matches.
"We create this culture that rugby is part of the school. It's six days a week with Saturday fixtures and the boys support each other pitchside on matchdays."
Partnership with Northampton Saints
NSB are also an official partner school with Northampton Saints. This year, they provided the most players from any school to Saints' under-18s. Four players will also be offered first-team academy contracts this year.
"The boys have to manage their time really well," says assistant first team coach Adam Baker.
"When we get into sixth form and into that first-team setting, we will try and put them through a programme that matches up with an academy programme, so if they go into that pathway, they are fully aware and prepped as to what that day-to-day life looks like."
However, NSB aren't the only state school making an impact.
They beat Campion School from Essex in the Continental Tyres School Cup semi-finals.
It was a compelling contest which went down to the wire, with two state schools playing high-octane rugby in front of a passionate crowd of over a thousand people.
The Rugby Football Union has a network of rugby managers to try to embed the game in state schools.
Twenty-two of the best state schools compete in the ACE (Academy, Colleges and Education) League. England internationals George Martin, Joe Heyes and Harry Randall all came through that route.
The programme is designed to support players who may not attend traditional rugby-playing schools, providing daily coaching, competitive fixtures, and opportunities to train alongside academy players.
Northampton Saints have two state school partnerships which play in the ACE League: Moulton College in Northampton and Sigma Sixth Colchester, located at Philip Morant School and College.
"Growing state school rugby is a one step at a time process," said Beaumont. "This is over 10 years of hard work. But it can be done. "My advice to other schools is find a way to get more numbers in training, organise a game. "Put a tournament on, you don't need posts. Make it a habit. Get kids playing.
"Rugby needs every state school to push and develop rugby. This is the perfect time.
State school rugby could be really special."
One of NSB's biggest stars is their 18-year-old captain Jack Lewis, who plays in the back row.
He has been at NSB for the past two years and in the Saints academy since he was 14.
This year he made his debut for Northampton Saints. Now he's preparing to lead his school for the final time in a Twickenham final.
"NSB taught me how to act, it's the closest thing to a professional environment," he said.
"A lot of people work hard behind the scenes, they sacrifice their time. It's given me so much as a player and a student.
"I've never played at Twickenham, it would be a great achievement if we could lift the cup there. We want to show what NSB stands for."
If you do not already have an account Click here to Register.
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2026:03:22:10:12:49 by Faithful_City.
" SEMPER BELLATOR "
Some more intervention here to get schools and clubs collaborating, get children involved and playing as well as supporting coaching would do wonders.
It’s also not just about the elite. Obviously this has benefits for a wider feed into professional pathways but we have to remember the percentage that play sport professionally is tiny. The long term interest in the game comes from those who are involved in it at all levels - grow that and you will grow the game.
I’d be curious to know how much the RFU is really putting into this, but for it to be worthwhile it has to be serious and not a little dabble while we still pay overseas stars millions from RFU subsidies.
What I would say though is that this is far from a “normal” state school. It is one of the very best in the country and as the name suggests, only for boys. That’s not to take anything away from what they’re doing as it shows what can be done on a tiny budget, but we need to see more lads playing for (in our case) Worcester who went to Christopher Whitehead, Tudor Grange or Bishop Perowne. Until we see that happening consistently and on a far more representational basis, the system still needs work.
I haven’t been overly impressed with how we’ve started with our state school engagement to be honest. A sponsorship from Grammar, specific coaching sessions for both grammar and kings, easter holiday camps at Malvern College at hundreds of pounds a pop and yet I haven’t really seen much about what we’re doing with state schools. If the club just aren’t publicising/shouting about it, they should be, tell us. Change the narrative.
NSB is a non selective state, it’s impressive what they have achieved.
The quick and cheap way for prem clubs to a pipeline of talent is to partner with fee paying schools as many of them invest heavily in sport and use it as a marketing tool to drive new customers in. They are very good at developing players to ceiling of their potential and supplement a cadre of well coached and otherwise average players with some stardust. You put players like Cadan Murley or Nick David into a well drilled side, you get a lot of bang for buck.
Because this is helpfully cheap, the prem clubs can then top up with some expensive stardust, with a nice fat RFU subsidy. That means the system structurally reduces pathway opportunities, drives wage inflation (to obviously unaffordable levels) and reduces playing opportunities in the prem for English qualified players. We then top that off by excluding players outside the prem from consideration.
This narrowing will in the end kill the game.
The answer is much more serious investment in growing the game at grassroots level. A vibrant and well integrated school, club and county network will expand the player base and long term interest. It will also spin off some talent for the professional pathway as a by product, but that is not the main purpose.
All very well taking a very narrow approach for niche Olympic sports such as with rowing or cycling because the goal there is to find a small number of medal candidates in what is a less competitive pool. The equivalent in rugby will not work, because unlike Olympic sport which is largely funded (presumably because of national prestige) rugby has to be commercially viable.
Cricket both has and hasn’t solved this problem. In India where it’s basically a national obsession and the grassroots is very big, it’s flying and has led to an explosion of franchise cricket at the expense of the club game. That seems to be the direction rugby 360 is trying to go in. At the same time it’s seen decline in some other markets, West Indian cricket has withered as bigger more US centric sports have eaten it up. English cricket occupies a weird middle ground, but the best it’s got to is just about keeping the whole game solvent and a national team that sometimes does well, but sometimes does very badly.
The thing I don’t see from the RFU is the thinking behind the approach they are taking. It’s almost as if they’ve seen a model that has been successful in another context and decided to ape it, but wearing the clothes won’t make you the surgeon. Sports that do well commercially and have large scale interest by and large have a very very broad player base, especially at youth level. By all means look at the success of the NFL, but that exists in a completely different context to rugby union - the size of college sport and the competition to get into that drives a large pool of talent chasing a very small number of professional places. This drives very high levels of elite performance.
But you’re absolutely right in what you say, the dressing up is a bit OTT and the grassroots still needs to be broadened massively. An over-reliance on private schools will and indeed is killing the game.
By broadening the game at grassroots level as you suggest, you don’t only get potentially loads more players playing the game, you get more future fans, who perhaps drop out of playing but still enjoy the sport. Indeed I expect most existing rugby fans probably fall into this category.
Or, as I expect will happen, and as Worcester Warriors V2 seem to be doing, we can just keep doing the same thing again and again and focus on about 6% of the population.
My son is very much involved in grassroots, at a thriving club in Co Meath, Leinster. The situation is similar in one way, in that little or no attention is paid to rugby in state schools, although it is often played. The Irish national team, as I’m sure we all know, gets the vast majority of its indigenous players from half a dozen exclusive and fee paying schools in and around Dublin. There the similarities cease, because the feed of promising youngsters from minis & juniors is skewed by a “panel” system in which the best potentials from all local clubs & schools in Leinster are scouted and offered training at those fee paying schools. Not scholarships, they don’t attend the school for tuition, only intensive rugby training, and they leave their local rugby clubs to do it. A fair few of “panelled” lads never return to their clubs, although some do.
I know this full well, because my 15 yo grandson failed ( much to his relief I suspect) to be “panelled” and continues to train & play at his local club.
How does this swing back to this thread? Here’s how.
I don’t think there’s too much wrong with grassroots in England. I think this thread concentrates on the issue of schools, as in state (selective or not) v fee-paying, which is a long standing issue. But we all know that over the decades the fee paying and selective state grammar schools have provided a disproportionate number of international players.
So why do I say there’s not much wrong with the grassroots? Because this issue isn’t all about schools. There are many local clubs with thriving mini & junior sections where on a Sunday there’s dozens if not hundreds of kids involved. The key issue is the drop off of kids as they get older, and get more interested in other things. That’s the stage at which the vital support is missing. The coaching and development pathways, the money to have decent kit and equipment, the money to organise leagues & travel to away games. The things the RFU has disgracefully allowed to die back to virtually nothing.
This is not so much about schools, this is more about local clubs. This is about the massive drop-off of numbers from minis & juniors to older groups. How many clubs have thriving Colts sides now? When my lad was coming through school he played there, and at Kiddie Carolians, he was usually in the 2nd XV at Colts level but did improve later.
He went on to prop (once) against one Trevor Leota at a league game in Dubai a few years ago, and somehow survived the experience.
You need to at least backfill that as competition for attention is very high. I’d wager most of the kids who end up with a long term interest played as a mini at their local club, I know Nick David started at Stratford…
My understanding is that all of the ACE schools (Prem academies) have to be state schools / colleges?
Agreed it's really sad about Colts fall - off. Not a single active Colts club team in Bath now (the only remaining ones in some of the surrounding villages / towns).
[24/25 adoptee: Francois van Wyk]
When a prem academy discards a player their interest ends. That’s it.
Colts is a key transition point to senior rugby and directly feeds adult grass roots. There are plenty of local clubs and better support for the colts set up via counties and coaching would make a massive difference.