I’m afraid to say that my previous experience of rugby has been horribly sexist. It’s been a sport for my brother to play, my dad to coach and me to simply enjoy from the sidelines. I had a vague understanding of the rules – you can’t pass forward and you can expect to lose some teeth.
So I was pleasantly surprised to find my O2 touch rugby session comprised mainly of women; there was also the assurance of no pain as tackling and scrums are off limits. That’s all great, but when I turn up to the class at an outdoor sports complex in central London, it’s 31 degrees celsius. The black plastic pellets carpeting the 3G pitch ramp up this heat even further, to the point that my phone overheats and shuts down, something I’m not at liberty to do.
That’s because we’re kitted out with tracking devices (the same the pros use) to measure our performance, and are thrown straight into warm-ups based on hand-eye coordination. There’s a reason I stick to solo workouts, which becomes apparent when a ball thrown at me from trainer Gareth leaves me cringing, and the ball 12 metres away.
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