Champions: Whitgift’s under-15s rugby team and sports staff celebrate an outstanding 2025-2026 season
Whitgift School has once again won the national schools’ rugby cup.
The under-15s squad triumphed 32-26 last week in a hard-fought final at Ealing against defending champions Northampton School for Boys in the Continental Tyres Schools Cup.
Whitgift started their final at speed and could not be caught, leading 15-7 at half-time and scoring three more tries in the second half to see off a Northampton fight-back.
“Schoolboy rugby is in a really healthy situation,” Chris Wilkins, Whitgift’s long-standing director of rugby, said.
“I think grassroots rugby is so important to English Rugby and the RFU, so to have a big day like this with lots of teams and support is huge.”
Get in: a determined and powerful move by Whitgift (in white) saw them go over for the title-winning try
This year’s final was Whitgift’s first win at under-15 level since 2018. The South Croydon boys’ fee-paying school has now won the RFU’s title four times at this age group, matching the school’s four wins at under-18s level.
The victory caps an outstanding rugby season for Whitgift, whose first XV were unlucky to lose out on an appearance in the under-18s final when suffering a 29-23 defeat to Epsom College earlier this month.
Wilkins said: “We had a great quarter-final win against Sir Thomas Riches, with a last-minute kick to get us through.
“It’s always disappointing to go out, but we’re not going to sulk, we’ll say well done to Epsom and move on to the next.”
Former Whitgift pupils and national schools’ cup-winners have included international fly-half Danny Cipriani and Elliot Daly, who in this year’s Six Nations won his 70th cap for England in a career that has seen him play in the World Cup final.
Steve Grainger, the Rugby Football Union’s executive director of development, said: “Schools rugby plays a hugely important role in the game in England.
“For many young people, it’s the first time they pick up a rugby ball, and often the place where they fall in love with the sport and everything it stands for, which is why it remains such an important part of the pathway into the sport.”
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