USA are victors in Rugby World Cup!
World Cup history was made at Moss Farm on Thursday 23rd October when a USA team won the Rugby World Cup. Yes, USA (well actually Charles Darwin School of Northwich) won the special Rugby World Cup Tag Tournament run by Northwich Rugby Club. 20 teams representing 18 schools from Northwich, Middlewich and Winsford had a glorious afternoon as they battled out in a tournament modelled directly on the Rugby World Cup. Over 200 children, parents, teachers and young people from Weaverham High School all seem to have had a fabulous time. Pictures of the event and more news will be coming on this page soon.
A photo gallery will be included on a new page :- RWC photographs

Tag!     Fiji vs Japan -
Photograph courtesy of Claire Manning Northwich Guardian

Rugby World Cup’ Tournament
Later this autumn Australia will host the 5th Rugby World Cup (RWC) tournament. The opening ceremony and first match between Australia and Argentina will be held in Sydney on Friday 10th October. Twenty teams will then compete in four pools during October and November, culminating in the final, which will be held back in Sydney on Saturday 22nd November. After a disappointing performance in the last Rugby World Cup in 1999, England will be hoping to win this time around.
As October 10th approaches, the TV, newspapers and radio will be giving more and more media coverage to the event, and you will be able to follow news about the tournament by listening to the news or looking in daily newspapers. In the meantime you can go to the official RWC web site - RWC2003 - or the English RFU site for match information. If you’d like to follow the matches closely and even invent your own scores, try downloading our own RWC spreadsheet. Here you can type in the scores for each match and the spreadsheet works out points and orders the league tables. The spreadsheet has all the UK match times and locations and can be printed out if you want hard copy to show your friends. New Now with correct scoring system.

Northwich RUFC to run Schools Tag ‘Rugby World Cup’ Tournament
Northwich will be running a special World Cup Celebration in October. This will take the form of a local tag tournament and will be  modeled around the Rugby World Cup knockout competition with twenty schools throughout Vale Royal taking part. Each school will be assigned one of the countries that is taking part in Australia, and will be encouraged to use this country as a topic in class for the Autumn term.
Twenty schools have been invited to enter children from Years 4 & 5 for this special tournament which will take place at Moss Farm Sports Complex on Thursday October 23rd. As with the regular summer tag competitions run at the club, both girls and boys must make up the teams, with games running at 7 minutes duration. Northwich Rugby Club will be running and managing the tournament and will provide referees, administration support and thanks to sponsorship from Cosgrove Civil Engineering Ltd, will be awarding trophies to the winners as well as certificates and special RWC T-shirts to all children participating. Local MP Mike Hall has agreed to present all the prizes.
The tournament is planned to start at 2.00 pm. sharp and finish between 4.30 & 500 pm. and matches will be held on the Northwich’s first team pitch. Each school will be sent a formal invitation and information pack shortly.

The Draw
Players from Sale Sharks kindly offered to draw the teams for the tournament while at the club on Sunday 14th September. Here now is the draw with the world cup international team shown with the school who will represent that country. A link is also given to that countries Rugby Union home page. However information about the world Cup can also be found at other rugby web sites like Scrum.com, Planet Rugby , the Rugby Site or the Rugby Times.

Pool A   Australia   www.rugby.com.au           Darnhall School A
             Argentina www.uar.com.ag               Barnton School
             Ireland     www.irfu.ie                   Moulton School
                   Namibia   www.nru.com.na               Winnington Park School
                   Romania   www.rugby.ro/en/news.asp   Hartford Manor A

Pool B     France     www.ffr.fr                     Greenfields School
             Scotland   www.sru.org.uk               Hartford Riddings Lane
                   Fiji          www.fijirugbyunion.com     Handley Hill School
             Japan      www.rugby-japan.or.jp       Leftwich School
             USA        usarugby.org                   Darwin St

Pool C     South Africa www.sarfu.org.za       Hartford Manor B
             England    www.rfu.com                   Over St. John’s
                   Samoa     www.manusamoa.com.ws     Sandiway School A
                   Georgia   www.georgiarugbyunion.org Comberbach School
                   Uruguay                                     Darnhall School B

Pool D   New Zealand www.nzrugby.co.nz     St. Wilfreds
             Wales      www.wru.co.uk                 Weaverham Forest
             Italy       www.federrugby.it           Middlewich School
             Canada      www.rugbycanada.ca       St Josephs
                   Tonga                                         Sandiway School B

A spreadsheet showing the format of the competition substituted with the school names can be downloaded via this link :-  Schools RWC spreadsheet. The spreadsheet also incorporates the tournament rules.

Trophies
 Just like the Rugby World Cup, Northwich will be awarding the winner with a tournament trophy, with smaller trophies for runners up and third place finalists. There will be certificates and T-shirts for all players participating. Furthermore we will make a donation of items worth £100 to the school with the best project or topic work on the assigned country.   
Good luck everyone in the tournament. for any questions about the tournament arrangements, rules etc., please contact Simon Bridle - Junior Club Chairman at 01606 881971 or sbridle@northwichrufc.co.uk.