Barnard Castle School has long been a familiar name in the rugby world and therefore the School was delighted to be asked to host this year’s Independent Schools Lambs Northern Trial.

The Independent Schools Rugby Football Club, known as ‘The Lambs,’ was set up in 2006 to provide representative rugby opportunities for talented young players where they did not exist before.   

For the trial, independent schools in the north of England were asked to send up to 3 representatives for each age group, U11 and U13.  The aim of the trial was to select two teams, an U11 and an U13 Northern Independent School team.  Both teams will then attend a National Festival at Rugby School, the birthplace of the sport, in March.  There will be three other teams representing the south-west, south-east and the midlands

Barney was fortunate to have all 6 of its nominated players selected for the Festival.  In true Barney fashion there are two sets of brothers following the tradition of sibling success.  The School has been fortunate to have had the likes of the Underwood brothers (Rory and Tony), the Tait brothers (Mathew and Alex), and the Dickson brothers (Karl and Lee) hone their skills on their rugby pitches. 

Two current sets of brothers will be hoping to follow in their wake, Edward and Freddie Lockwood from Driffield and Guy and Max Pepper from Eggleston.  Edward and Guy have been selected for the U11s and Freddie and Max for the U13s.  Alongside them, Archie Thompson from Barnard Castle has been selected to represent the U11s and Caleb Ellis from Darlington the U13 team.

Master in Charge of Rugby and Housemaster Mr Luke Monument said: “At Barney we pride ourselves on developing junior rugby. We do this through competitive fixtures and quality coaching. It is a delight to offer our young men the opportunity to further their development with representative rugby, gaining experience away from school will inevitably make our boys and subsequently our teams stronger”.