REIGNING champions Park School have won the Tag Rugby Festival for the third year running.

The jubilant Queens Park-based school won all 10 of their matches at Meyrick Park.

The Tag Rugby Festival has been running in Bournemouth for 12 years. It became part of the School Games in 2011 and is now the qualifying event for the county competition.

Tag rugby has proved very popular with Bournemouth Primary Schools mainly due to the fast nature of the game and the fact that boys and girls can play together.

There were 18 teams at this year’s event, each bringing a squad of 12 children.

The event is hosted by Oakmeadians RFC.

School Games organiser Sarah Park said: “Oakmeadians are very suppor-tive of the event and see it as an ideal opportunity to introduce more children to the game of rugby.

“We work in partnership to organise the tournament and supply referees for all the pitches which allows the teaching staff to spend more time coaching their team.”

The tournament consisted of a morning group of games drawn at random.

Schools were then reorganised into three new groups based on their finishing position in the morning.

Finally, the top group of six schools competed for the two county final qualifying positions.

“The tournament had a real community feel with so many groups working together and with a record number of schools attending it showed that Primary School sport is thriving in Bournemouth,” added Park.

Winners Park School and fellow qualifiers St James School will represent Bournemouth at the county final on March 31 at the Sir David English Centre.

The title of ‘fair play champions’ went to St Lukes who followed the ethos of rugby players showing the best attitude and levels sportsmanship.

The event was helped this year by students from Bournemouth University, Winton Arts & Media College and Harewood College, who worked hard as team managers, scorers and line judges.