Safety and welfare, the questions that come up
Head knocks, mouthguards, hard ground plus mixed rugby.
Free to read with no account. They work at a pitch with no signal too.
The answers
A child has taken a bang to the head. What do I do?
If in doubt, sit them out. They don't come back on that day. Concussion in children is taken more seriously than in adults and the return is staged over weeks rather than days. The RFU's Headcase programme is the thing to read before the season rather than on the morning it happens.
Every grade
Do they have to wear a mouthguard?
The RFU strongly recommends one from the moment contact starts and most clubs make it a condition of playing. Check what yours asks for. A moulded one from a chemist is fine at this age. It wants replacing as their teeth change.
U9 and up
The pitch is frozen. Should we play?
That call belongs to whoever is standing on it, which means the referee and both coaches together. Frozen ruts turn an ankle in a tag game just as readily as they hurt somebody going to ground, so it isn't only a question for the contact grades.
Every grade
One child is far bigger than everybody else. What do I do about it?
Manage it rather than ignore it. Who they're matched against in contact work is your decision at training. It's worth a word with the other coach before a game. The same goes the other way for a child who is much smaller, who will stop turning up long before they tell you why.
U9 and up
Can boys and girls play together?
In matches, all the way through U11. From U12 the game splits into separate bands and the girls in your squad move into girls' rugby, which catches clubs out in September when it should have been sorted in June. Training is different: a non-contact session with nothing competitive in it can be mixed at any age once you've judged it safe.
Every grade
What is squeezeball and why is it banned?
It's going to ground and feeding the ball back through your own legs from a curled position. It's out at every age grade and no coach may teach it, because of what it does to a neck and a spine when somebody arrives on top. If you've seen it at your club, it came from a video rather than from a coaching course.
U10 and up
How much contact should one training session have?
Less than a new coach expects. The RFU publishes contact training guidance with limits worth knowing before you plan a season rather than a session. In practical terms, contact goes early while they're fresh, in short goes, with the handling work either side of it.
U9 and up
Equal Play is not affiliated with the RFU. Regulation 15 is theirs. These answers put it in our own words, so they are a summary rather than the thing itself. It is reissued every summer as well, so read this season's there rather than trusting a copy on somebody else's website. Ours included. If a referee on match day says something different to this page, they are right.
Read against the RFU's 2026/27 appendices in August 2026.
What your grade is allowed to do
The answers above say what the rule is. The rules guides say what a whole grade may do, which is the thing to read in August rather than in a car park.
- What U7 rugby looks like
- What U8 rugby looks like
- What U9 rugby looks like
- What U10 rugby looks like
- What U11 rugby looks like
- What U12 rugby looks like
The other questions
- Tag rugby. Tags, the three second count plus the six tag turnover. U7 and U8 only.
- The tackle. How high, what counts as held plus what the tackler has to do next.
- Ruck and maul. Who may join, what "Use it" means plus where the offside line sits.
- The scrum. Three players at U10, five at U12, nobody pushing at either.
- Restarts and touch. Free passes, free kicks plus why there is no lineout anywhere in minis.
- Kicking. What the boot is allowed to do from U11, plus the U11 rule that looks wrong.
- Match day. The Half Game Rule, rolling subs plus what to do about uneven squads.
- The referee. Who referees, what they can give plus why there is no sin bin.
- Running a session. How long, how many helpers plus what to do if you never played.
Every topic in one place is the way in. The app searches the answers themselves, which is what you want when you know what you saw rather than what it is called.