The club’s youngest player is just four years old.
Although most rugby pitches were unsafe in August owing to the hot summer and bone-hard surfaces, Lichfield Rugby Club had two playable ones (out of our four) because of careful maintenance throughout the year. This meant that warm up games were able to be played as arranged.
The Rugby Football Union then decided to delay the league and cup campaigns of all clubs in England, so competitive games have only just started in the past fortnight across its sections.
Lichfield RFC, based at Cooke Fields on Tamworth Road, has 22 sides across the club, which have had to be patient to put their summer training into practice. The club’s youngest player is just four years old and the oldest is in their 50s, so there are opportunities for men, women, girls and boys to play their rugby on a weekly basis. For those aged up to 11 years, training and the games are mixed.
There are two men’s and women’s sides in the club and the youngest age group is the Rugger Rats, who then move up into the under 7s. Teams based on age go all the way up to under 18s, male and female.
The men’s senior side plays in the fifth tier of rugby nationally, while the women play at tier two, which is one level below the Prem, in which all the England internationals play.
A large part of the men’s teams is filled by ex members of the club’s mini and junior sections, which is not quite the case with the women owing to the way female rugby is still being developed in clubs. Lichfield has a long established reputation for nurturing players of both sexes and ensuring they can go onto better quality teams.
Joe Woodward, currently of Leicester Tigers and England A, started at Cooke Fields and there is an agreed development pathway between Tigers and Lichfield for the women. That is ongoing.
On Monday evenings, the club also provides its facilities for touch rugby, which attracts people of all ages who are seeking a means of exercising and having some competitive fun.
The men’s rugby is played on Saturdays until April and all the other sides play on Sundays. There were 15 teams in action last Sunday alone!
To ensure the club can cope with all the foot traffic coming its way, we are very proud of continuing to develop the clubhouse and pitches every year and our immediate projects are upgrading the floodlights on three pitches and installing brand new lights on the fourth. To cope with the likely hotter summers, the Committee of the club has decided to sink a borehole to provide better and cheaper supplies of water for the pitches.
Lichfield Rugby Club see its itself as being very much part of the Lichfield community, working with local charities on a regular basis, and even has its own bowls team in three separate leagues, playing home games on its own bowling green. If anyone would like a taster of what the sport of rugby is all about, head to our website for more details!
David Lewis is the 2026-27 President of LRFC.
