Worth a try? Job centre gets unemployed women playing rugby to boost confidence
RUNNING around in the cold and wet on a muddy rugby field may not sound like your typical route back into work.
But one job centre is placing women on an intensive fitness course led by an England player in a bid to tackle unemployment.
The regime has proved a real shock to the system for some of the participants, many of whom haven’t done much physical activity since school.
But the women – some overweight and in their 50s – insist it has given them a huge confidence boost in their search for a job, as well as improving their fitness and general well-being.
The training is led by England rugby union player Amy Wilson Hardy, who starred for Team GB at the Rio Olympics in 2016.
The course, part-funded by the Department for Work and Penover
‘Confident and stronger inside’
sions, is being pioneered at a job centre in Richmond, south-west London. The two-hour sessions, on two days a week over eight weeks, are backed by psychological support and mentoring.
They start with stretches, squats and press-ups before the women work on rugby skills and then split into teams to play fiercely competitive games.
One of the volunteers, 54-yearold Christine Hart, said she lost a stone during the first five weeks and now ‘feels like Rambo’.
She added: ‘I’m a fat, 50-plus single mum and I’m out of work. I always thought I hated rugby. But now I feel far more confident and stronger inside.’
Mrs Hart, an investigator and author from Richmond, said the whole idea of signing on at a job centre had been hard for her. She added: ‘I cried all the way. It felt like an admission of defeat.’
She signed up for the course, run by the School of Hard Knocks charity, but admits she had little idea what she’d let herself in for, thinking it would be ‘a bit of light stuff in the gym’. She was won by Miss Wilson Hardy and her fellow volunteers.
She said: ‘The atmosphere was really friendly, even though it was a massive effort.
‘On that first day we were all freezing and then it rained, but the part I most enjoyed was playing rugby at the end.
‘I felt despairing before the course, now I feel like Rambo.’
Miss Wilson Hardy said she is delighted with her first recruits, adding: ‘I couldn’t have asked for a more fun, tenacious and determined group of ladies to coach.’
As the current course is the first, its success in helping the women find employment has yet to be measured. But the School of Hard Knocks has been encouraged by results so far and aims to run rugby-based courses for around 800 adults and 700 children over the next year.