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Rugby Cubz NI is a local social enterprise that revolves around promoting inclusivity and empowerment, I sat down with the coach of Rugby Cubz head coach Rob Rossiter to talk about his business and how he has adapted the sport of rugby in order to cater to special needs children.
“Just around COVID time I started thinking there really wasn’t enough, having seen my son go through rugby and what it did for him” “I got to thinking what I could do with my experience, I had seen what rugby had done for my son and other children”.
“I started running a few pilot classes in Newry for autistic kids and reaching out to local autism support communities and it has just sort of grown from there”.
Rob had to think for new ways to adapt rugby in order to make it accessible to children with special needs “I adapt it, it’s a modified rugby so I just take certain aspects of the game without going into full contact”.
“I have soft mats. lately I have been running classes in Mourne Gymnastics. I have a soft play type thing there so you go in, they’ve got the ball in hand so they can run in, and they can crash and continue their tries, its all safe and they’ve got the crash mats, so its doing most of the physical stuff without doing full body on body contact”.
“The kids absolutely love it, because they’ve got the freedom of a really safe, comfortable space where they can do what they want”.
I also talked to Rob about some of the classes that he offers and how they differ depending on the time of year “Newry classes at this time of year I would just run classes indoors because its absolutely freezing, come Spring or Summer I like to take them outside. I'll use facilities like the rope walk and lately I’ve been using the facilities at local rugby clubs”.
Rob also discussed how he creates the classes in order to be accessible to different kinds of children on the autism spectrum “I sort of leave that to the parents to decide, in my experience without fail anybody who comes to the classes all get something and they all engage”.
I asked Rob where parents will be able to get in contact with him to talk about his classes “I’m on Facebook, I’ve got a website I’m on Instagram, you’ll see me popping up doing classes in the Ropewalk”.
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