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Join England's stars in Go Play Rugby's longest pass

September 14, 2007

Supporters are being invited join the England squad in completing rugby's longest passing sequence to help promote the RFU's Go Play Rugby recruitment campaign.

Jonny Wilkinson launched the online move on the www.yougofurther.co.uk website for students this week and rugby fans are invited to join him and his England team-mates in the chain.

The concept is a simple one. You visit the website and upload video of you or a friend receiving a rugby ball from the right and passing it to the left.

You are emailed when it goes live on the site and could appear next to one of your mates - or passing the ball to the likes of Wilkinson, Phil Vickery or Jason Robinson. There's a prize of two tickets for a game at Twickenham in the 2008 RBS 6 Nations for the most inventive pass!

Other England players who are taking part include Steve Borthwick, Lawrence Dallaglio, Ben Kay, Lewis Moody, Mark Regan, Matt Stevens, Mathew Tait, Jamie Noon and Joe Worsley.

Go Play Rugby is the biggest recruitment drive ever mounted by a sporting body in England, which aims to boost adult player numbers by 6,000 this season.

The Ј1million initiative is backed by head coach Brian Ashton's squad and supported by a sophisticated media campaign designed to connect with 16-30 year-olds backed up by trained volunteers from more than 700 clubs and 130 colleges and universities.

It aims to direct them to the www.goplayrugby.com website and to find their nearest club by texting their postcode to 64411.

A key part of the target audience are the students who may drift away from the game after leaving school, hence the link with the yougo network of students.

And Emerson Osmond, yougo’s Commercial Manager, is delighted with the partnership.

He said: "Working with the Go Play Rugby campaign is a great demonstration of how www.yougofurther.co.uk is helping students go further with all aspects of their student life, in this case encouraging school leavers who played rugby at school to get stuck in at their University or College"

Go Play Rugby is supported through a generous Ј500,000 grant from the National Sports Foundation that backs up investment of Ј300,000 from the Rugby Football Foundation and Ј200,000 from Go Play Rugby sponsors the Chelsea Building Society. England Rugby sponsors O2 are also supporting the project.

www.yougofurther.co.uk is a student-only social networking website enabling students to make friends before they arrive at university and keep in touch when they get there. Students can also find information on jobs, money, fashion, entertainment, fashion and travel and even get their talent spotted through a student showcase area.

The website, supported by UCAS (University and College Admissions Service), counts in excess of 79,000 members, and over 31 million page views since its launch in April 2007.