Game 12 - Christian Lang STAR Scheme

I'm very well, guys, and thank you very much for inviting me along. This is very generous of you.

I think there's a buzz in every rugby community in the country. I've had discussions everywhere about it. It's hot stuff and a really interesting issue, especially the lowering of the tackle. It's been discussed since around 2015, with World Rugby work and trials in different places, including France, where it's sternum to below. I agree with Lee on the handling and delivery by the RFU, which is more concerning than the issue itself. Research shows sternum to waist is the Green Zone for head injury reduction, so that might be the target area, but the optics of how it was announced are poor.

Many professionals are saying it won't help, which is a problem. In professional rugby, there are cards for high shots, and coaching is focused on shoulder-line tackles. We must be careful comparing professional views to grassroots rugby, as they're played differently. The challenge for coaches and officials is huge. In the academy, we won't implement this new regulation this year, giving us four weeks pre-season. The RFU's communication is lacking, and they haven't explained the process behind the decision. In any sport, regulation changes with new health impact information, but communication is key, and this approach to changing a fundamental element of rugby is interesting.

Exactly, Henry Slade might not attempt a tackle, leading to breaks and scores. From a non-purist view, it might turn into sevens-like with more tries, but I also like attritional rugby. The RFU has succeeded in making rugby trend on Twitter, but the ramifications will be through every level and facet of the game.

I think the navel target will move up to sternum, like in France, where it's been successful. The French team's performance shows defensive strength and open play. As a Bristol fan, I'd love more flowing rugby, but the communication and optics of the RFU's approach were their biggest failing. We'll wait and see next year.

Utilizing rugby, I acknowledge Wayne Sanford for the term 'rugby home'. I went to university in Bath, trained as a teacher, and worked in deprived areas of South Bristol. My interest in childhood adversity came from seeing children with similar starting points learning at different rates due to non-academic reasons. Star Scheme started at Chew Valley Rugby Club, founded by Dan Waller, to support young people through rugby. It removes barriers like transport, builds community, and provides kit, supporting kids until they're 18. I was involved in a trial day with 244 kids and saw incredible changes. As a school leader during COVID, I engaged with parents and families, and Star Scheme improved relationships and communication. The program has transformed how we connect with families and support children with trauma through rugby.

You can kick a football and smash it a long way and keep going. Most kids can manipulate a spherical ball really easily, be that basketball or football. But rugby—you can have a go at kicking it, but it's a technique that takes some practice. In a hyper-vigilant, hyper-aroused state, it's really hard to have the focus to kick a rugby ball well. But passing a rugby ball takes a bit of thought and you can only do it so far, so it gave a more controlled outlet. And there's something about rhythm. When kids are hyper-aroused, when they 'flip their lid,' their prefrontal cortex has gone offline. They need rhythm, and rhythm is really key for these kids. Actually, for all humans, rhythm is absolutely key. If you think back to when you felt angry, sad, or super upset—music can be really soothing. Going for a walk is really effective, partly the fresh air but actually the rhythm of walking is a key part of regulation. For these kids who were going to rugby on Sunday, I could toss a ball back and forth with them. Throwing a rugby ball is really rhythmic—you get in there, it's a whole body motion, you cross your centre lines, engage your central nervous system, lots of receptors, you start giving stimulus and input to the brain which isn't that frozen face. You start to get into regulation. You don't need to talk but you do need to concentrate, because if someone throws a ball at you, you've got to be ready to catch it. You don't have to communicate, and I found that was a magical communication and regulation tool for these kids who perhaps didn't always have that. It wasn't always when things went wrong—often just walking into them in the morning, trying to get them into the water, yeah yeah. Then you get three or four of them and in that two minutes of throwing a ball around, I'd learned about everything that was going on that day—how they felt, where their state of mind was, what might need to be done to bring them to a place where they're ready to learn. I started to see a massive, massive impact.

And I suppose my story is a nice little follow-on from that. It was like, right, this is working brilliantly—what's next? Chew Valley's cool, where else can we take this? He'd always had a plan to grow it more, and I got involved with that. And then about this time last year, much to the delight of my mortgage advisor, my wife heard that I'm resigning from my established career in education and the steady wage and the comfort of a great pension that comes with education and all those things. I'm going to resign and run the STAR scheme. My wife said, 'You've got a passion for it, it's great. Is the funding in place?' I said, 'No, no funding, we haven't got the money for that.' She said, 'Is there a contract?' I said, 'No, no, we haven't got anything grown up.' But we have got the fact that we know this works. I'm just completely madly passionate about how brilliant and how much fun it is, so I'm going to go and do that for a job. And fast forward a year and it totally is what I'm doing for a job. You'll be very pleased to know that we've just about got enough funding to pay for me, which is great because the prospect of starting on a street corner and singing was probably more likely to get me in prison than anything else I've done in my life. The STAR scheme is what I live and breathe and work at every day. So that's kind of—I don't know if that was a history of me or a history of the STAR scheme, or a little bit of both combined, but it's a bit of an overview at least.

In the early days—so I grew up in Taunton in Somerset. Secondary schools in the late 80s and 90s is where you first encountered rugby. Rugby didn't exist in primary schools really in those days, and without some good direction, rugby doesn't exist enough within primary schools at the moment. So secondary school, yeah. I had two super passionate and enthusiastic Welsh PE teachers who taught us all to play rugby, and I loved every minute of it. I wasn't great—I'm far too cowardly to be brilliant at tackling. But the good news was that at 11 and 12 I was quite short and quite tubby, so I was a great hooker. I played in the front row, I played flanker, played at fullback for a while. Got my testicles stood on by a boy who was much bigger than me—a brilliant tackle though, a game-saving tackle, so I'll take that. I loved every part of it but knew that probably—I felt that I wasn't brave enough to be part of it. Now looking back, experience is an amazing thing, but I so wish I could go back and have a word with myself and say, 'Everyone's scared when someone's charging down at you. Just apply the tackle, use the technique.' In those days we were always taught to target naval down, pump your knees to make the ball carrier think twice. I wish I could have gone back and told myself that, and had someone to make that normal and usual, because I think I would have continued to be involved and loved the game. So I didn't continue to play it really beyond, I don't know, probably year 10 or year 11. But I continued to go and watch. Lots of my friends were super keen rugby players—a few of them represented England schoolboys and Somerset and stuff like that—so it was always really good fun to go and watch. Taunton Rugby Club always had a good setup for us to go and watch. There was definitely no underage drinking—that wouldn't have happened—but we could always get a burger for a good price and it was somewhere to go watch, so going to watch games was always easy.

I went to university in Bath and my mum's cousin—whom I call my uncle—ran pubs. One of them was on the other side of the way from the rec, so I quickly established that I was really good at spending all my student loan and money far quicker than I think even the student loans company would have expected. I think at one point they might have suspected I'd been robbed because it disappeared so quickly, but I wasn't. So I had to get a job and it made sense to work in his pubs. I used to love rugby days—they were an absolute dream. The pub was probably no bigger than the room I'm in now—it was called The Rubber, the tiniest little pub. You'd get a couple hundred people in there and in and out of the streets. We used to have to go out of the back door behind the cellar to get into the street to walk around and collect glasses from the front half of the pub because you just couldn't get through. It was filled with fans.

What I loved about rugby, particularly coming from a football family—my dad played 25 years of football—is that on football days, Plymouth versus Exeter back in the day was a bit tasty. You wouldn't venture into Plymouth pubs if you were an away fan. In Bristol, Bristol City in the south, Bristol Rovers in the north—there are Rovers pubs and City pubs where you wouldn't mix. But working in that pub and being around Bath rugby fans, the days that always stood out for me were when we had above the bar a Leicester Tigers hand-embroidered bar stool that someone had stolen from the equivalent pub in Leicester, and in the equivalent pub in Leicester was a Bath rugby one that had been stolen, because back in those days Bath versus Leicester was the rivalry. On Leicester days it would be twice as busy as every other home game, which was already busy, and it would just be pure joy—fans from both teams mixing, having a laugh, having a few pints. You could never pour enough pints. If we could have started a month before, we'd still be running out of pints to pour in glasses. The atmosphere was incredible.

We used to literally—once you know, if it's a three o'clock kickoff, at five to three the pub would be empty and they'd all go off. We'd power the glasses in the washer, lock the pub, and run across and watch the game as well. Then five minutes before the final whistle, we'd nip back to the pub and get it all open so that the end of it could happen. So I was around rugby and watching rugby and being part of that game day atmosphere, which was just pure joy. It was a huge amount of fun. And at the end of it, I was getting paid, which really helped the bank manager understand that I was still alive and hadn't been robbed. To get paid to be in amongst that atmosphere—it was brilliant.

Being at university, there's a lot of rugby going on, a lot of friends who are playing rugby. You get a lot of opportunity to mix with rugby players and be around them. I found myself pulled to the social element and the family, the tribe, of being in and around rugby. That's what stood out for me and that's what brought it to me. I said earlier about the idea of 'rugby home'—I totally got that, even as just a fan. Now as a rugby parent, I get what rugby home is. I felt part of something bigger than standing in a pub trying to endlessly pour pints. Feeling like you're part of something bigger is what rugby is to me. And if you look at how the traditions feed through the game, it's obvious that that's going to produce community and family. That's what I loved about it and still absolutely love about it now. I love the game—I watch it with my wife often if it's an away game and it's on TV. She's still at times entirely baffled by some of the regulation and detail of it. Being a bit geeky, I quite like the detail of the laws and regulation—maybe it's not geekiness, maybe it's the need for someone to try to corral me and hold me in place. But I like watching all that and being part of it, and I hope you can see it's just joyful being around and being part of it. Now I happily take my kids to go and watch Bears games—it's not even a thought, it's a fun thing for us all to go and do.

Going to watch football games in the same stadium in the same seats is a very different experience, which I'm less comfortable with. That's nothing to say about the atmosphere at the ground—it's great—but the tribalism of football is less attractive to me as a model that I enjoy being in and that I want to present to my kids than the community which is rugby. That's where rugby came to me at that point, but rugby stayed with me because of the community. If nothing else, I went to university in Bath, moved to Bristol, and I've never really left Bristol. I'm in Portishead now, just outside of Bristol. There's no point supporting the football team in Bristol because you're not going to enjoy yourself very much.

I think that whole principle of home—it's rugby home. I don't know. Full disclosure, both my children play football as well. My daughter's a really accomplished footballer and far better than I ever was—she's far better than I was at most things, that's probably true of both of them. But it's the home that makes a difference. I never felt home in football. I loved playing football, but I never had that sense of home. You might have had it in a team, in whatever age group or whatever stage you're playing, but not as a club necessarily. In rugby you get it instantly as a club. If you speak to a kid that plays football, they'll tell you, 'I play for this team, under 12s.' They'll tell you who they play for as a team. But in my daughter's team, there's her and two others who play for the same rugby team, and when they talk, 'Who did you play for?' 'North Bristol.' They don't give any more detail—it's not about 'I play for this team.' 'I play for North Bristol, the club, North Bristol.' That's who they're part of. That's not coming from me—I haven't pushed that. There's more of a community aspect and I work in rugby—it's straight from them. 'Who do you play for?' 'Club of North Bristol.' There's no detail in it because they're part of the community of the rugby club.

When you're there, there is likely to be hanging out with the under-14, under-16 girls and spending time in that multi-generation environment that creates. They're with their own team, and they're also with girls who are currently under-11 who are still playing mixed, who are looking at what it's going to be like next season. They're interacting with them as well. The whole community is ready-made to support them and keep them engaged with the game.

I think that's just the desire to try and help and improve the kids, help them try and become the best versions of themselves they can be. I don't think it's any more complicated than that. And I suppose there is a benefit to have already been in the teaching environment, because you're used to dealing with groups of kids, you're used to looking for different triggers, knowing how you can inspire them, what things turn them off—'let's not do that, let's do this activity instead.' So I think teachers are given a bit of a leg up, a head start, if you like, on the coaching ladder.

Interestingly, that's something I was listening on a Dan Carter podcast, talking about how coaches at a lower age group—let's say the sixes, sevens, eights—that sort of group—a lot of the coaches struggle first of all to understand how to deal with those kids. They were particularly talking about coaches who were either in the professional game or were just coming to the end of their playing time and trying to look for coaching opportunities in the adult game. They said they'd missed the opportunity to coach kids and they didn't have that affinity, that empathy with them. So it's really quite interesting. Anyway, I'm digressing here. But yeah, I think there are similarities, there is a reason why teachers get involved with rugby, and I think it is just the desire to want to make those kids the best they can be.

It's certainly—we've yet to—every club we've walked into to work with and introduced the STAR scheme to, when we go into a committee meeting or it might be a meeting with volunteers who feel they're going to take the STAR scheme on—the first question I ask is, 'Where's the teachers? Who works in schools?' Because you're going to get more of their hands every single time. It's reassuring because it's really likely to succeed because these guys have got already the understanding and the desire of making and improving those children to be the best that they're able to be. I think that's what attracted them, and the fact that it comes with a nice set of the respect model and the regulation—rugby is really reassuring to teachers. To know when something goes wrong in rugby, that respect will be there for the coach and the referee because that's implicit to the game—it's the fabric of the game. For me, actually, coaching girls' football is very similar. It's like football for grown-ups—you kind of get to just have a conversation about the content rather than the context of the behaviour. You want the kids to enjoy it and things are going to be loose at times, and that's really important. But it's really nice to know that you're going to come and just coach. In rugby, they know that turning up, putting the effort in, and listening to the adult or the authority figure is kind of part of the game—it always has been for them. So you're not coming but perhaps in your school day you've had to be responsible fully for that part as well. So to come to an environment where you just get to teach the content, see the progress in the kids, and realize success with them—that's really attractive for teachers, to have that outlet. For me, as I went into school leadership and spent less time in the classroom and directly with children every day, it was a really awesome outlet to be able to work as a coach and just enjoy the time with the kids learning something and developing something with them, being part of that, with no paperwork, marking, or whatever else might come with being in that world. And it gets improvement. I think that's what the attractive feature is.

Very, very well, yeah, very well. We continue to be there at Chew Valley, working with the core of those children we started the project with—they're still there. There's been some coming and some going, as you would have in any rugby club and rugby teams. So that one's still going really well. We're launched and active in 14 clubs now across Bristol and the Worcester region. We're just starting to branch out into Bath, and we're partnering with the Matt Ratner Rugby Foundation and launching a project in Croydon, which we've imaginatively behind the scenes called Project Croydon—sometimes we refer to it as the Croydon Project. If this goes wrong, I'm thinking marketing is probably where I should be. Yeah, it's amazing. It came to me and Sean Morgan, the CEO of Matt Ratner, we had an inspirational moment when we came up with that name. We're launching with them and hoping to work with three clubs initially in the Croydon Borough, up to five by the end of the season, and then continue to grow in that area. Southern Rugby Club in South London have come on board with us this week as well, so we're acquiring clubs left, right, and centre. Eastleigh—they're interested, in conversation with them. Salisbury Rugby Club. And what's really amazing is we spent a lot of time, particularly at the end of last season and the beginning of this season, going out and making contact with clubs, finding them, finding those people that have a similar mindset, and introducing STAR to them as a possibility. Where we are now is actually clubs are approaching us. There's an inquiry function on our website and people are coming to us to ask us to go and work with them.

It feels—one of the people that works with us, Dan, who set it up with his wife George—says it feels like it's just about to explode, that the blue is really pressurized and it's about to launch in its direction. So from that side of things, from the growth and expansion of where we are, it's absolutely incredible. In terms of the kids on the ground, it's—I think it's indicative that the lowest level of concern for me is the children and young people involved in the charity. It's not because I don't care—it's because I'm so secure with the experience that they and their families are getting and the impact that's having that it doesn't feel like something I have to worry about. I have concern for it and I'm continually looking to see, is this really to the level we want it to be? Is this an experience which is positive and engaging, is going to guarantee lifelong participation in rugby in one way or another? But I'm not worried about it. I know that the work that grassroots rugby clubs are doing and community rugby clubs are doing is just incredible.

There's very few clubs we're going into and describing what we do as the STAR scheme where they go, 'Well, we've never heard of that, we don't have anything like that.' Most clubs say, 'Oh yeah, we do loads of that, but we wish we could do more.' In some of the clubs we work with at the moment, we are basically just going to provide that link between getting the kids from the school where they're engaged into the local club. It's that simple in some clubs. Because the world of grassroots rugby—the world of rugby kind of does these things, you know. Make sure that those kids that perhaps aren't able to provide it themselves get kit, and not just kit from sponsors, but clubs having boot exchanges where you just put one pair in, take another pair out, and it's subtle and comes from a place of love. It just means that kids are able to engage. That's a great thing that's going on at every club we go into. When we were first forming it, 'How do we present STAR scheme?' 'Well, we'll have to tell them about this amazing idea we've had—a boot exchange.' And you're kind of right in the first stroke: 'Yeah, we do that.' 'Yeah, okay, so that's no longer a thing we have to present to you.' Clubs are presenting far better ways of doing it back to us.

So it's growing, it's succeeding, we're getting more and more children involved. I think it's becoming slowly more and more known in the community of rugby. I often voice it as being a no-brainer for anyone that might be a stakeholder or be interested in it. For the schools—essentially we go to schools and say, 'Would you like some free rugby provision, from in some instances the local professional community and professional club community foundation, and then would you like us to provide grassroots sport for some of your most vulnerable children and ensure that the families don't ever incur a cost other than their time to accompany their child, and enjoy it for the rest of their childhood?' We've yet to come across many schools going, 'No thank you, no, we're quite happy thanks, those most vulnerable kids can wait.' No one in the world is thinking that. We're going to grassroots rugby clubs and saying, 'That amazing work you're doing—would you like some support and a bit more funding to make sure that you can do even more of it?' That's a no-brainer. And to go to the community foundations or go to people at the RFU and say, 'We can help to formalize and mobilize that already existing volunteer network and grow it, and we can up participation in the game by targeting and introducing the game to communities within communities who don't access it.' In some areas of the country and some communities, rugby isn't played and there isn't really a local professional club. In some areas one, two, or three clubs are present, and therefore you can understand the lack of rugby. But we're doing this in Bristol—we're doing this in the southwest. We've got Gloucester, Bath, Bristol, Exeter—that's geographically maybe a large area, but rugby is prevalent in the southwest, and we're still engaging children within communities for whom rugby isn't a part of their diet of sport. And then we introduce it to them.

For many of the kids that we target—we identify kids in discussions with schools. It's schools that give us the beginning of the idea of which kids in their cohorts would be really good to work with and would benefit from it. We run the coaching sessions in school so that we can see which kids really have an aptitude for it. We're not going to find kids who might have suffered adversity in their life who've got no interest in rugby and drag them to a rugby club and pin them there because we paid for it. The thing about this is, we say it's got to be an exceptional experience for the kids—right? It's got to be not just as good as, but exceptional for these kids and their families. That means they've got to love it and not love every minute of it—no one loves when it's so cold you can't undo your laces—but you can have the enjoyment of the game. That enjoyment of the game and enjoyment of the experience is key to what they're doing.

So we get that identified from the school—who those kids are—we pair them with the clubs and support the clubs. And then to be honest, we don't sit back because we've got to be involved in keeping it going, but then it's rugby that does the work of enabling these children to process trauma, to overcome adversity, to reverse kind of outcomes which would otherwise be true of them.

Yeah, so there's not very many of us at the moment. The plan is it will grow. The plan is that we'll have regional representatives—the clubs in that region will communicate directly to them. We've got one incredible human called Sean Morgan who's agreed to be regional sort of manager—we call it, she hates the title—of the Bristol area, but currently is running Bristol and Worcester. We'll undoubtedly sort out the clubs in Bath, so we're definitely overstretching her. But they'll encounter myself in the first instance—generally when we're explaining what the STAR scheme is and how it works and what it's up to, it's been me or it might be Dan, who set the charity up. In terms of the days they're running it, it's myself, Dan, and Sean at the moment. That's the kind of STAR scheme team that are delivering this.

What we do when we work with clubs is we ask that there's someone within that club—or people within that club—who are going to take on the role of leadership for STAR within it. The ideal is that that isn't somebody who is already a grassroots volunteer at that club, although it often is because they're the people most passionate about it. But we want to build a wider volunteer network. We ask for someone to be that STAR person—that leadership role—because it needs to be, as you're alluding to, visible at club level. We need to know who at Wimborne Rugby represents STAR and stands for the STAR scheme, celebrates what it's about, ensures that transport for kids is sorted, that they're going to get fed after the game, they know where they're going to be, that Mum and Dad or the carer of the child knows where to turn up and when. That might be with transport. That same leadership role ensures that we've got a wider bank of volunteers—we call them Family Support Volunteers, and again I'm pretty good at naming things and coming up with creative names. What they do is they support families. The intent would be that in the under-eights, there's some parents who are already there on a Sunday who are going to look out for new parents. We don't tattoo the STAR scheme children—we've looked into that, it's definitely illegal—and we don't dress them especially in any special way. They're part of the club. We introduce them to the club and support them, but we don't place them at the club.

The Family Support Volunteers look out for those new parents and they do this incredible thing called being human—they talk to them, they welcome them in, they share a cup of tea. In some clubs we have budgets for a cup of tea, because some clubs are like, 'Right, cool, we can cover cups of tea for people, that's not a problem.' Other clubs want to know there's a fund for it, and that's cool. However a club wants to run the STAR scheme, we'll support them to do that to achieve the goals we're up to, on the principles that we've got. The Family Support Volunteers are there to make sure. So we've got volunteers for that.

Then what we do is we support those—the STAR leadership role within the club—to make sure that first of all they have all the resources they need to make stuff run successfully, and they have the support they need, because they're going to come across challenges which may not be a usual part of being every day as a volunteer in a rugby club. Then we provide training to them in the world of ACEs and attachment theory and early childhood trauma. We give some base training back to them, to the coaches, to the Family Support Volunteers, so they have an understanding of the world that they're operating in. That's not to say they go in and they direct conversations at the STAR kids using the hints and tips that they've got from the training—it's not about that. It goes back to the idea of being human. When we've got a better understanding of what might be happening for someone and why that means it appears as it does, we've got a far better chance of actually helping the situation rather than making the situation worse or blowing it up. Like one of the things in the coaches' training, we talk about how you use your voice. There's a good place for a raised voice on a rugby field, but it's really about creating a more regulated environment...

Because it's quite a big space, but you know, you'll see the most accomplished coaches, and I'm sure this feels for you too as well, that will have a signal, be it a whistle or whatever they do. And I've got one guy who waves a rugby ball in the air, which at first when I watched it I was like, how are you expecting that's good? Because the kids are used to it, you raise them and they were like, oh yeah, we'll go and sleep because he's waving a rugby ball in the air, but they just know, right? So we talk about the use of voice because a child that's feeling anxious is, to use neurological terms, hyper-aroused, is going to have an interesting response to a raised voice, particularly if we consider that child might have encountered some sort of domestic violence or abuse in which volume and a raised voice was there, or any trauma that's included kind of raised voice and the violence that can come with a raised voice.

Now I'm not saying that rugby coaches are shouting violently or aggressively, but the child when hearing that and hearing that stress input isn't going to reasonably think, oh I wonder if they're angry or are they just raising their voice to get my attention. They're going to hear the raised voice and that's going to trigger that stress response. But knowing that as a coach, knowing that could be true of some of our star kids but also of all children, means you change your approach and you get to a wave rugby ball or you blow a whistle or whatever it is that the coach chooses to do to raise the attention of the child. Just little things like that that make the difference between a kid that's disengaged or terrified.

Some of these kids will have that stress response, and all children will have that stress response to a raised voice. Then becoming used to it isn't them no longer having a stress response, that's them having a resilient response from their parasympathetic nervous system which calms them. So the stress happens every time, it's just the calming happens more efficiently, and that's kind of huge in neurotypical development. But for kids who haven't got that neurotypical development, particularly not children who haven't got a neurotypical parasympathetic stress response, they stay in that aroused state that kind of maybe it's fear, maybe it's excitement, but they stay there for longer.

Something as simple as raising your voice to shout across a field to attract the attention of a child who might be about to do something seriously dangerous is an appropriate time to raise your voice, but it could have quite big ramifications. So it's not about we don't do that, because sometimes to say you don't in a study kind of it's like saying do not tackle above the waist, and you instantly create a load of, you take away a load of choices and you also introduce a load of choices which are really hard to make. So we don't say don't shout, because maybe sometimes you're going to, but be aware of what that shout was.

Because it might be that from the shout comes the, oh I had to raise my voice then, that was loud wasn't it, all right, is everyone okay? Like I had to raise my voice because James was about to make a tackle that was about to do something that put him at risk, so I just want to stop that situation. So is everyone okay James? Don't worry, you know I'm not angry, there's no anger, I'm just trying to keep you all safe. Well actually what I'd like to do, look at that situation again, let's set up in a game situation and look at what the alternatives are. It turns into a coaching point.

So we provide the training to enable that, not to give a script, although we probably would have a few things of things not to say. We can all guess what they are, but we don't have a script, but we have an approach and we have an understanding. The greatest threat to us all as a species is ignorance, isn't it, and an acceptance of ignorance as fact. Maybe we could roll this all the way back and apply it to the tackle height. The great thing about social media is seeing the kind of ignorance respond, and it's brilliant, it's absolutely awesome. Someone who remembers watching the World Cup Final in 2001 and since has no engagement with rugby has a very solid opinion on where the tackle height should be raised or lowered.

But if we combat the ignorance around what might be going on for these children and these people, because the reason we like to engage adults is adults are essentially just children in bigger bodies, right? So we can apply the same principles to us all. The reason we educate the volunteers, the coaches and the volunteers in that world, is so that the community that we exist in in the world of rugby is a far more understanding community. And with further understanding just comes greater success for everyone.

Christian's Frozen. I'm sure Chris, now, you'll be back shortly anyway. But yes, get on. We're big in the states at the moment. Even if it's a club that is out of the reach of STAR scheme, then get on and donate, support in every way you can.

I have to be honest, when I started the whole Be More Rugby idea, my desire was that it would help support youngsters that had barriers to rugby be able to get into rugby somehow. And I will shout out Georgie because she's incredible, following, and it was a comment from her that turned into a conversation that has turned into this podcast happening. So Georgie, thank you so much.

Well, it's a great question. I think I covered it a bit maybe in the first half about how it provides for me, personally it provides that kind of place that I can go watch live sport, enjoy being there, maybe have a point, maybe not. I'm happy to take my kids to it and it's something that provides that additional community and that kind of space that's a fun and safe space to be in, a nice place to be.

And then when I think about what's wrong with me personally, what has completely changed the direction of my life I suppose, and the life I think about realistically for the last year and a half, and particularly since August this year. I've always taught, that's what I've done, being a teacher was kind of what I enjoyed. I'll be clear, I enjoyed my career until the end in teaching, I didn't leave teaching because I didn't love teaching, I just found something that was too good an opportunity to waste. But yeah, rugby's completely changed the direction of my life and my career.

If I think about what that change has done, then it means that I've gone from rushing the kids out of the house to a breakfast club to arrive there for 7:30 and picking them up at half five most days, to being able to walk my son. My daughter goes to secondary school now so there's absolutely no way I'd get away with dropping her anywhere, unless I was wearing a mask and driving someone else's car. But I get to take my son to and from school every single day and have time that I never appreciated before. That's pretty awesome. So rugby in that sense means that I've got more balance with my family and my family time than I think I ever achieved in my time as a teacher. I sometimes felt I spent a lot more time with other people's kids than I ever stood a chance of spending with mine, and that's no longer true.

Rugby's given me, through the job and through the work of STAR scheme, which is the Rugby World, it's going to give me like a lease of life where I wake up every morning super excited about what I'm going to do that day with STAR scheme and what it might bring and what surprises might come all the way out of the woodwork. That's a hell of a thing to have. What Rugby's given me is kind of not a second chance because that sounds like the first choice wasn't great, I loved education and I'm passionate about education and the right to it and the access to it and what it does in life. But what Rugby's given me is that same love and that same passion in a completely different sphere and completely different world.

And it's introduced me to some really interesting and incredible people. I was bloody amazing at being an educator and no one ever asked me to go on a podcast. I've been on two since I've done this. Dan Cottrell was the first one. And you know what, the only thing is that I had less warning about Dan Cottrell than I had about you. So we had our first ever fundraising dinner in September this year, the end of September, and it was a Thursday evening at Ashton Gate Stadium. It was amazing, just absolutely brilliant, almost 300 people in the room supporting stuff, it's really emotional.

I stood with Dan who started STAR scheme and we just kind of stood at one moment and looked around and I was like, look what we've done. But anyway we had that, so like two o'clock in the morning, half two in the morning, drove home, went to bed. The next morning we got back together, the STAR gang to kind of what we learned, what went well. That was a meeting about half nine, finished at about quarter to 11, and Dan Waller said right, what are you doing at 11 o'clock? I was like, not much if I'm honest. He's like, oh good, we're doing a podcast. You mean in like 15 minutes? Yeah, we'll do the podcast. And that's how we went into Dan Cottrell.

So all that time in education, no one inviting on a podcast. I've done two since doing STAR scheme. And then when I think about what does rugby mean, but for STAR scheme, well, it's the vehicle that enables us to be part of the transformation for some of the most vulnerable young people and families that are in our society. It's not a Hallmark card moment, that is genuinely what rugby and the STAR scheme are doing. To be a part of that, well that's just frankly incredible. So yeah, rugby, what does rugby mean to me? Quite a lot is probably the honest answer, although I'd like to remind everyone that I'm an outstanding coward, I'm fairly useless at playing the game.

Overcoming adversity. And I don't mean that just to flip back to STAR scheme. Obviously there's a clue there as to why rugby is the platform STAR scheme works in. Going back to that thing James about really enjoying a traditional rugby match, a traditional rugby is a victory over adversity, and if it's really good it's like adversity from lots of levels. The skill and the physicality of the opposition, providing that attritional defensive or attritional rugby within the rules of the game, which takes personal discipline. The rules of the game sometimes are the biggest adversity in and around the ruck or maul, aren't they?

But also to overcome and score a try following seven or eight phases of rolling around on the ground and trying to produce something magical is almost more enjoyable for me to watch or to witness than that length of the field run, because a length of the field run is about an individual, maybe two or three individuals who've done something outstanding, which is always to be celebrated. But I guess it comes from my views that led me to being a teacher, the attritional rugby and the overcoming adversity together, there's something about the togetherness of attritional rugby that I really, really enjoy. It's at its best when it's a 15-man defense.

Sad as I might be, I like nothing more than seeing a good 7. And the great thing about being a Bears fan is that when it goes well you get to see quite a lot of this, of prolonged lengths of time in your own 22, tackle after tackle, rucks, all that attritional stuff that just takes every member of the team to be part of it. And I think that's what the value of that is, and as a value is what Rugby's taught me, that no matter what the adversity, no matter what's in your way, with the right support and the right approach and the right knowledge you can overcome it, and you can achieve something that at times would seem almost impossible. I think that's what I've learned from rugby.

I think first of all, the physical outlet and the outlet of physicality that rugby provides is really key. For all of us, we all need that connection to being physical, and unless you're playing at the most elite level, you're getting to do that outside. Massive fan of the outdoors, spend as much time with it as I can. The benefit that the outdoors brings to you is important. You don't really meet many people in rugby who don't enjoy standing in a wet, muddy situation getting freezing cold for a prolonged amount of time. The love of the outdoors and hoping they get that joy of activity, that joy of physicality, I hope they take that.

But I think really, I've maybe harped on about it, but I hope that every day they take from rugby they know they're part of a community, they know that behind them is everything they'll ever need to get through whatever it is they face. I spoke at a dinner at the Houses of Parliament, which, again in education, it will surprise a lot of people out there, and Lee you'll be particularly surprised that in my whole time in education no one invited me to a dinner, let alone a dinner at the Houses of Parliament.

No, yeah, plenty of reception kids wanted me to sit on their table while they destroyed fish fingers and chips. There wasn't that much difference between that and the Houses of Parliament if I'm totally honest. But I spoke there and it was in the beginning of December, so I'd only been, I joined STAR scheme as MD in August, and at that time we were in one club and we were launching with a couple of others. We were exactly what we were supposed to be at that point.

Fast forward to December and I'm kind of traveling up on the train to go and speak at Parliament, you know, that place that you see on TV. I kind of stood there, and I was speaking to Dan and a couple of people, and it's one of those key things that you kind of said to remind me, to make sure that I remembered it, that when I stood at the front of that room and it was with Matt Ratner Foundation, it was their dinner, to launch the idea of the wonderfully and creatively named Project Croydon.

He said, look, you remember when you're stood there, you'll be on your own at the front, who knows how many people will be there. So when you say you're not on your own, you've got all of the community of STAR behind you, and with that comes all the community of rugby has stood with you, understanding where you're coming from, supporting what you're doing. And all I am is just delivering what that community is doing, I'm just having to be the person that's there.

It's one of the most reassuring things I think I've ever experienced and felt. You give us a room of, I think it was about 45, 50 people, so not massive. I thought I'd spoken to hundreds, so scale-wise, but I'm ashamed to say that where I was and the occasion was, it definitely hit home. But to know you stood there, do you know what, all of this lot's got my back, they're all with me here to do this, and that community is behind me. That's overwhelming. I think that's one of the key bits for me.

I think that comes from, we've both taken part of some training in an organization called Lighthouse, and we work and believe in this world of possibility, like what's possible, and work with that and create a future for STAR scheme that's built on what's possible. So when I talk about our aim is that we'll be in every Premiership region, the 14, if we just for a moment forget about Wasps and what happened there, but the 14 regions. There's still those 14 regions as it will be from September. 14 regions, 20 grassroots clubs, 25 kids at least in each of those clubs in each of those regions, 7,000 children.

We don't say we're going to be there in 10 years, because that means it's too late. So we say by the end of three years from when we started, so this season, next season, the season after, by then that's what we're going to have done in England. And then we're going to go and do that in Wales and Scotland and obviously Ireland because they're quite quick and easy to get to. But actually if I'm entirely honest, I'm happy to share this aim and our ambition, but for me it's not an ambition, it's just I'm sharing with you what our plan is and where we're going to be.

But we'll be in every rugby-playing nation, STAR will be in every rugby-playing nation doing the work that we do. And I think we can probably get, he's one of our leads on fundraising, might go a bit white if he listens to this bit, but in 10 years there's no reason why we can't be in all those countries. No reason whatsoever. It just takes the opportunity which we create, those opportunities, and then when we're in every rugby-playing nation delivering and supporting STAR and therefore delivering rugby home to the most vulnerable children in society globally.

Then we start to think about maybe going into cricket or football or rowing or archery. I've always thought archery would actually be a fun place to try it. Giving kids with adverse experiences and sometimes interesting behavior manifestations weapons has got to be the next step. It's really test whether this works, it's a brave man that takes that decision I think.

Yeah, like, I don't know anyone, maybe it's just the people I know, but I don't know anyone that sits and knows that for example in Bristol pre-pandemic, 20,000 kids, or 19,700, but 20,000 kids living in income-deprived households in a city of nearly 400,000. 20,000 children. When we're working in London and in the borough, there's like 900,000 children, 700,000 of that, that are living in deprivation and with adversity, just in London.

When you start to get to those numbers and when you learn the facts of what happens to those children when they become adults, a worryingly high proportion of the adult prison population in England will identify as having multiple adverse childhood experiences. So when you know how that's true, you know how that unfolds and how that plays out, then that is back to that phrase no-brainer, you've got to be in action of doing something about that.

Yeah, so my passion, my drive is to meet those kids and reach those kids who we know can benefit from rugby. And sharing the statistics of kids living in income deprivation, I don't know if it recorded, but I said about a worryingly high proportion of the adult prison population in England would identify as having four or more ACEs, and it's above 80 percent.

When you start to look at that and know that those children currently living in deprivation have an increased chance of becoming that sort of outcome. Children who encounter multiple adverse childhood experiences are 85 percent more likely to contract terminal illness, their life expectancy is shorter. When you know stuff like that, and that's not just me, that comes from varying researches over the last 30 or 40 years which are held up inside the scientific forum. When you know that stuff is true, when you know that 16 times more likely to attempt suicide or eight times more likely to develop depression and all that sort of stuff.

Then by not doing something is, well, it just doesn't sit with me. There's no way I can't be in action for that. And then what STAR scheme and what the world of rugby provides is a mechanism which will help to reverse that for those kids that we're able to engage with.

We're not looking for kids, we've got videos produced, and me and in some of our social mediums we celebrate the success of all of our kids, and some of those kids are making academy rugby. That's incredible. You know what an amazing thing if we achieve the ambition, when we achieve the ambition of those 7,000 kids and we roll that for a few years, we're going to turn out some first-team Premiership players just statistically it's likely. When we go globally, well, an international rugby player is not unimaginable from what we're doing.

And the minute that the first STAR kid walks out onto a first team I'll be an emotional wreck to think, you know, rugby's done that, right? Rugby knowing what that kid could have been. Look, we're working with some current professionals for whom this story is true, for whom their story is the STAR scheme child story. STAR scheme just didn't exist when they were, they were lucky to have someone who did what we did for them, and it's their local rugby club essentially is what's done it.

But what our ambition is, all part of our ambition, the drive for me is knowing that we work with whichever community rugby club from wherever, and we put a kid in at seven years old through the STAR scheme, and they get the support and the care and the nurture and the provision that rugby provides and STAR scheme supports to do. And fast forward that 20 years and that child's rocking out for the firsts or the seconds in that community club, like that's success, right? That kid's got rugby, that person has rugby.

Then you maybe roll it forward another 15 years or depending on how badly injured they become or what the hell the tackling rule is back by then, then they're starting to coach and they're a leader in that community of rugby. You take that child who didn't have rugby and had no access to it and provide it, and they turn into a leader with that community of rugby and hopefully a leader in their community wider and beyond rugby. That's the success we're after.

We celebrate everything all of our young people do, and in the rugby community we love nothing more than knowing that one of the children from our rugby community has gone on to become a professional, to be involved in elite pathways. Like what an incredible thing, because it gains the plaudits it deserves. But for me, when I'm older, grayer and even more tired out, to be able to attend a grassroots local rugby game, let's go and watch Chew Valley Firsts in however many years' time, and know that, right, those four little STAR kids that we introduced to the game and now look at them, that'll be absolute gold.

Yeah, definitely, and wholeheartedly agree with that.

Thank you, thank you very much. Thank you. We like to think we open the door to be home for those kids that otherwise don't get it, and then like you said they exist and then rugby does the magic.

Yeah, let's go. Not just because I fancy visiting Australia, New Zealand and watching some games over there, that's just coincidental. I mean naturally you're going to have to go there just to make sure everything's okay and keep an eye on things. You've got to do that, but that's all due diligence, absolutely. I've got a responsibility to ensure that what we're delivering is consistent and to the highest quality in all areas of the world.

Thank you for the generosity of the offer and the space to talk into, it's been awesome. It's been really good fun, I've really enjoyed it.

Thanks James, thank you Christian.