Set up in partnership with The British & Irish Lions, the Championing Women and Girls’ Rugby Award grant scheme is designed to celebrate outstanding initiatives by local rugby clubs from across the four unions in supporting women’s rugby.

East Kilbride was was recognised trough the Award this year, having showcased their significant growth since 2022, and the club’s work doing outreach, education and social programmes, including special support of parents.

Women’s convenor Elaine Martin was thrilled to see the club pick up the grant and said it will be used to upgrade facilities at Torrance House.

She said: “We demonstrated that we had grown our senior ladies team from one player in 2022 to sitting around 50 players, with ages ranging from 18 years to 50 plus.

“We are offering females the opportunity of doing some fitness and to be involved in our team and play rugby. New friendships have been made over the past few years and, with a lot of the players having children, we look after them on game days if they come and watch their mums playing on the field.

“We put our application in with the aim to upgrade the shower room that the females use at East Kilbride Sports Club. We promoted that we had hosted two charity events in 2022 and 2024 for Inflammatory Breast Cancer, with over 100 females attending both events.

“We are now working with primary schools and high schools to increase our numbers in the girls section and have managed to field an U14 team for a few games this season.”