IURU Kay Bowen Cup Profile: XRugby7s Bringing New Players To 3rd Level Rugby

University of Galway hosted the 2022/23 Irish Universities Rugby Union Kay Bowen Cup yesterday with victory for DCU in the 15s Kay Bowen Trophy. 

The addition of XRugby7s for this season also brought new players and new teams to the popular annual Women’s Rugby competition for 3rd Level Students. 

XRugby7s is an accessible format of the game played cross pitch with seven players per team as a fun way of introducing rugby to players. The format features reduced intensity contact while the need for fewer players allows teams to get up and running without a large player base.

Maynooth University took the XRugby7s prize on the day and IRFU 3rd Level Committee Chair Kevin Dineen says the format is a potential game changer for competitive rugby at this level. 

“It’s a fantastic innovation”, he told Irish Rugby TV in Galway. 

“It allows colleges who wouldn’t maybe have had 15-a-side teams previously and it gets in girls who might never have played rugby before.”

Sarah Armstrong and Anya Skillen were part of a Queen’s University rugby setup which elected to only compete in the XRugby7s format on the day. 

“This year, we had quite a lot of freshers come in and they’d just started rugby in September,’ said Sarah.

“Today was really good to get a wee bit of experience. They were playing at their own level.” 

“It was nice to see the girls get the chance to play on a smaller scale,” said Anya. “Try and get some low tackles in which is really good for the freshers to learn and just experience it in short burst of time rather than a full 15s game. 

To learn more, watch the full video below. 

Click Here To Learn More About XRugby7s In Schools.