St Leonard's first to reach Aviva Premiership Rugby Schools Programme Grand Final

St Leonard's Primary School are the first to book their place in this year’s Aviva Premiership Rugby Schools Programme Grand Final after they took the honours in the opening festival of the year held at Sandy Park.

The Exeter-based school were one of 18 that have been visited by the Exeter Chiefs Community department since the start of the season to take part in the five-week programme, which will introduce over 36,000 young people to the sport through tag rugby.

Now into its fourth year, the programme is aimed at pupils aged 8-9 with each Premiership Rugby club working at 50 schools. The basis of the Chiefs’ involvement is to work on skill development, team skills and learning the rules of tag rugby before they all engage in the end of term festival.

In a fun-filled day at the home of the Chiefs, all the schoolchildren happily demonstrated what they had learnt over the past month by producing an entertaining festival of rugby.

With schools pitted in to two pools, it was St Leonards and Duchy School that advanced into the day’s main final. In an absorbing contest, there was little to choose between either side and at full-time the scores were tied at 4-4. It meant the match went into a ‘Golden Try’ scenario with St Leonards prevailing with a late touchdown.

St Leonards will now wait to see who they will tackle in the Grand Final, which will also be staged at Sandy Park later in the season. The winners of this will then go on to represent the club at the main Aviva Premiership Final at Twickenham in May.

Next up for the Chiefs community department will be visits to schools in Tiverton, Cullompton and Callington.

Picture: Exeter Rugby Club

Click here for all the latest Chiefs news.