Bournemouth student graces Twickenham pitch with school's new kit

Just minutes before England kicked off against the defending Grand Slam champions on Saturday, Lauren Horwood, from Avonbourne School, proudly entered the famous Twickenham pitch wearing her school’s new playing kit for the national anthems.

The opportunity came as part of the All Schools programme, launched in 2012 by the Rugby Football Union, which aims to get more state secondary schools playing rugby and encourage students to join local clubs.

“It feels incredibly weird to have been able to go to Twickenham, because you see it on TV but now, I’ve been here,” said Lauren.

“I love how comfy the kit is and my favourite thing about it is that it has thermals underneath, which really makes it nice and warm.

“I first got into rugby because there was a club going on at school and I decided to go down one day, and we had people from Bournemouth University come in and help us out which was really cool.”

This season marks the eighth year of kit design workshops, with this series celebrating the RFU hitting its milestone of introducing rugby to the 750th state secondary school.

Lauren was one of 75 students from across England who were picked to unveil their new shirts in front of thousands of rugby supporters on behalf of their respective schools.

Each shirt was individually designed by the school children at kit design workshops last year, where pupils worked with Canterbury employees to learn about the core values of rugby, the pride associated with the shirt and the importance of colours, logos and emblems.

The All Schools programme, supported by Canterbury, is one of the RFU’s key legacy programmes set up to increase the number of state secondary schools playing rugby union in England.

The programme hit its 750 milestone in September 2019.

Visit www.englandrugby.com/allschools to find out more.