Gargrave Primary School have secured a place at Rugby School – the birthplace of rugby union.

The North Yorkshire school were runners-up in the Yorkshire regional finals of the Tag To Twickenham Competition at Pontefract, and will accompany winners Drighlington Primary School to Warwickshire next Wednesday.

The duo will be competing against the best young tag rugby players in the country on the ground made famous by William Webb Ellis, who is credited with inventing the game which now carries the name of the school when he first picked up the ball and ran with it all those years ago.

“The quality of the play gets higher every year and the skill levels at Pontefract were especially good,” said Neil Spence, Community Rugby Coach for West Yorkshire, who organised the day.

“We had Women’s World Cup player Sarah Hunter with us to encourage the players and get involved, the weather was kind and we had a great tournament.

“The youngsters from Drighlington and Gargrave are in for a real treat in the national finals, but they will have to be at their best to come away as winners.

“The standards are so high these days that it’s hard to imagine what William Webb Ellis would have made of it.”

Nor is Rugby School the end of the road. The winning team and the best runner-up in the national finals will play on the hallowed turf of Twickenham as a curtain-raiser to one of England’s international Tests this autumn.

The winners of the Spirit of Rugby Award, which rewards the school who designs the best Women’s Rugby World Cup poster, will also get to watch the final of the Women’s Rugby World Cup on September 5 at the Twickenham Stoop.

The Tag To Twickenham programme is the competition pathway for primary schools playing tag rugby.

It incorporates coaching delivered under the RFU’s Tag Rugby programme, which is sponsored by Yazoo, and the local, county, regional and national festivals pathway that is run by the Child Victims of Crime charity in partnership with the Police.

RFU Yazoo Tag Rugby reached the landmark of one million primary school children attending sessions in late 2008, two years after the scheme started.