The Bright and Lion RFC womens team played their first ever game this past weekend against Valley Rugby Union. Photo: Bright and Lion RFC.

It’s been a summer of firsts for Bright and Lion Rugby Football Club, which has been operating in the South Shore for less than year.

The most recent first, was funding from Rugby Canada, with the announcement that the club was selected as one of eleven clubs from across the country to receive support from the HSBC Bank Community Rugby Fund.

The fund aims to provide clubs with financial grants to support the sustainability and growth of rugby at the community level across the country.

This year, Rugby Canada received more than 40 applications from 10 different provinces across Canada.

Priority in selecting recipients was given to those rugby clubs, schools or community organizations who applied for grant funding that focused on cultivating the community game with special consideration given to projects that:

• Create or develop a school to club pathway to increase the number of registered rugby players participating in club rugby.
• Create new programs or develop existing programs that introduce women and/or girls to rugby.
• Build program delivery capacity through the development of Coaches and/or Match Officials within the rugby community.

The funding announcement came the same week the club hosted it’s first home games, one of which was also their first-ever women’s game. For now, the club has not entered either of its teams in any of the province’s official leagues, instead playing exhibition games against the province’s more established clubs.

The men’s side of the club has also participated in a few tournaments Rugby 10s and 7s tournaments which use fewer players on the field than the traditional 15-person teams.

Bright and Lion RFC will be using their funding from the HSBC Bank Community Rugby Fund to help new youth programming and more programming for women & girls.