Novos ladies are passionate about rugby, empowering women to participate in sport by competing at one of the highest levels in the country. Having previously played premiership and currently playing championship rugby is an amazing accolade for our club as well as women’s rugby in the north. However, it does include a lot of travel, usually on a Sunday due to pitch availability. We are the most northern based team in our league, with our closest league fixture being Harrogate and our furthest being Cheltenham, for cup games we can travel as far as Southampton and Bath. We are also grateful to have a second team who allow our section to get more women into rugby and develop new players. They also require this money to travel to games and fulfil their fixtures.

Unfortunately as like many others, the RFU was hit hard financially during the Covid-19 pandemic and had to make the decision to cut funding for travel expenses for our teams. We applied for a partial grant, which was successful but this only covers 50% of our travel costs.

In addition to cutting funding the RFU have stipulated that if you cannot fulfil a fixture, your team will be looking at relegation at the end of the season! Novos Ladies are a pioneer for women’s rugby in the North East, having been set up for almost 30 years and seeing 1st XV relegated after 10+ years in the championship would be a detriment to women’s club rugby!

We have been getting our thinking caps on and will be fundraising heavily ourselves but as they say, every penny helps! If you can, please help to support our ladies in being able to fulfil these fixtures and continue building women’s rugby in the north east.

Thank you in advance for your generosity!

Novos Ladies