City kids break new ground

Alaina Allen and her Southwark Tigers take the once hidebound game into fresh and vibrant territory

Burgess Park is nowhere near as posh as it sounds. A bit of well-scuffed recreational ground off "saarf" London's Old Kent Road, it is a long way from the well-heeled playing fields of Eton and about as far removed from Twickenham as the adjoining Bermondsey is from Belgravia.

But there, every Sunday morning, you will find a host of kids playing football. Rugby football, that is. No posts, no pitch markings and more grit than grass. Surprisingly, most are black, and some are girls. But most surprising of all, their coach is both black and a woman.

Alaina Allen, a bubbly, full-of-beans 20-year-old from Birmingham, is part of a heartwarming exercise that has seen sport skip happily across the social divide. She regularly takes her team of Under-10s, the Southwark Tigers, deep into Range Rover territory to play in places like Tunbridge Wells or in public schools against the offspring of the onlooking army of dads belong-ing to the chequered-cap-and- Burberry brigade.

Last weekend they were at Old Alleynians, in Dulwich, where they more than held their own in a mini-tournament amid voluble touchline exhortations and half-time tactical directives from coach Allen. For some it was the first time they had actually played contact rugby.

"They were brilliant," said Steve Farr, of the Rugby Football Union, who help to subsidise and orchestrate a scheme designed to bring the game to inner-city areas. "Alaina is doing a great job. She's a natural coach and is terrific with the kids."

Yet until last year Allen knew next to nothing about the sport. But when Farr visited South Bank University, where she is studying for a sports science degree, seeking the help of students to introduce the game of rugby to some of London's less-privileged youngsters, she immediately volunteered.

"I thought, why not?" she said. "I love kids and I love sport, having played a lot of basketball, netball and hockey at school. Why rugby? Well, it's different, and I like a challenge."

Not only has she obtained her RFU coaching certificate, but she also plays as a winger for one of those toff-sounding teams, scoring three tries on her debut for Old Beckenhamians women's XV, whom she was invited to join "after one of the school parents saw me running up and down the touchline".

But it is the Sunday morning sessions with her Under- 10s at Burgess Park that brings her greatest enjoyment. Around 70 youngsters train there as part of the Southwark Tigers network of teams who are supervised by a local schoolteacher, Vernon Neeve-Dunn. Allen's squad is the youngest, comprising some 18 players whose enthusiasm clearly matches her own.

Allen says that some of the kids who play for Southwark Tigers come from troubled backgrounds. Others have older brothers who have run with gangs who roam the grim tower-block estates overlooking Burgess Park.

But this is more than just another social exercise in keeping potential miscreants on the straight and narrow. The rugby is for real, and the name of Southwark Tigers, one of whose teams is good enough to have won the Kent Cup, has become respected among opposition from backgrounds where there is no need to scrounge for sponsorship or lifts to matches.

Once she has completed a teacher-training course Allen wants to set up her own youth-coaching business in a variety of sports. "I've looked around and there is so little in the way of sport for inner-city kids these days, especially in primary schools. Many don't even have PE lessons.

"I'd be happy to go into schools and give these lessons. It's the very least I could do."

This is a quarter of London with a sporting genre that is more Millwall than Harle-quins. It is home to many of Afro-Caribbean origin, to whom rugby is an alien sport, but some of its youngsters seem to have discovered a genuine passion for the game. As Allen says, the majority of Southwark Tigers players are black, "but there are some white kids and we've had a couple of Asians, though unfortunately not Asian girls. Sport doesn't seem to be part of their culture, especially a sport like rugby.

"It is something we need to work on. I really do think the type of rugby we play, nine a side and with simplified rules and scoring system, is a great game for kids of all ages, and all cultures."

As there are no facilities for competitive sport at Burgess Park, Southwark Tigers teams have to play all their matches away. But the RFU, through their charity, Wooden Spoon, have provided team strips and occasionally a mini-bus. They are also "working on" the provision of goalposts, while the youngsters' parents, some of whom are builders and carpenters, say they would be happy to build changing rooms if permission can be obtained.

"It is really heartening to see the support given by the parents," said Farr, the RFU's equity and ethics manager. "We have been investing in this type of project for about four years. It began as a rugby programme for schools but then we found there was really nowhere for kids in these areas to play the game out of school hours.

"They don't have access to rugby clubs, most of which are miles away. That's why we started the scheme at Burgess Park, which is typical of a sports field in a somewhat depressed area. There is nowhere for the kids to change and no rugby pitch as such, but they just put down some cones and get on with it.

"It was started last September and has been a great success, with the help of the borough council and others involved in the project. But launching Southwark Tigers was the icing on the cake, especially with someone like Alaina as one of the coaches. She is a fantastic personality and the only female coach, though one or two of the mums help out a bit.

"It is fascinating to see what can be achieved when everyone works together like this."