That's a Wrap! 360 Rugby Summer Camp 2026 — The Round-Up

27–29 July 2026 | Eastbourne Rugby Club

Three days. Blazing sunshine. An enormous amount of rugby. And a group of children who reminded us exactly why we love what we do. Summer Camp 2026 has officially come to a close, and we couldn't wait to share how it all went.

Meet the Team

Each morning began with a nice chilled check-in, followed by a welcome talk and an introduction to the coaches leading the way: Founder and Coach Joe, Coach Tommy, Coach Ashton and Coach Tom.

This year's coaching team really specialised in playing to everyone's strengths. Coach Ashton, a familiar face from Eastbourne's local sporting community, was recognised by plenty of our campers on arrival — and his brilliant nature with our youngest players made him a very welcome addition to the team.

Coach Tom brought something a little different to camp. Having worked alongside Joe for over a year, Tom is a shining example of what's being achieved in the school rugby scene right now — most recently securing a place at Washington State University on a combined Rugby and Academic Scholarship. For our players, having someone like Tom on the pitch was a brilliant glimpse of where the game can take you.

Day One — Building the Foundations

Day one was all about individual skills: movement, running, and getting comfortable with the ball. For Coach Joe and Coach Ashton, the highlight was watching the children develop their 1v1 skills and grow their understanding of how to create space against a defender — you could see the lightbulbs going off all over the pitch.

Over with the older group, Coach Tommy's highlight was seeing how quickly the children gelled, working together to improve their skills — working hard, but with smiles on their faces!

Day Two — Catch, Pass, Repeat

Day two turned up the tempo with a focus on catch and pass skills, hand-eye coordination, and catching under pressure. For Coach Joe and Coach Ashton, the standout moments came from our 2 vs 1 and 3 vs 2 challenge drills — players putting their passing skills to work and applying real pressure to score tries. Brilliant to watch.

With the older group, Coach Tommy watched hand-eye coordination come on in leaps and bounds through the skill games — improvements that showed up straight away in sharper catching and passing during the games at the end of the day.

Day Three — Bringing It All Together

Our final day was about tying everything together: developing an understanding of the rules and tactics, and letting all those newly learnt skills flourish in the game.

For Coach Joe and Coach Ashton, the final match of the day was the highlight of the whole camp. Watching the children demonstrate their running skills and movement, finding space, realising they'd been tagged and passing — or even passing before being tagged when they spotted a teammate in a better position — and genuinely playing for the team… it was a pleasure to coach and be a part of.

For Coach Tommy, it was all about the leap in decision-making from day one right through to the final whistle — especially seeing the younger children learning from the older ones, and all the tries being scored along the way.

While each day stood alone (and there were a LOT of games played!), the three-day format really lent itself to building the core skills needed to produce great, engaging, smart rugby players.

Keeping Our Cool

There's no getting around it — the heat was pretty extreme. But everyone stayed as cool as could be with ice-cold drinks from the cooler throughout, and a well-earned ice cream on the final day. If you're going to play rugby in a heatwave, that's the way to do it.

The Overwhelming Feeling? Gratitude.

More than anything, we came away from this camp feeling grateful. The children were more than polite — they were kind, responsive, conducted themselves with real maturity, and honestly, they just looked out for each other. That means more to us than any drill or try.

And here's a measure of success we're especially proud of: the number of children who came for a single day and were booked straight back on for more. We are blown away by everyone's support.

These kids wanted to come and play rugby. They wanted to be part of grassroots rugby. And that is an amazing feeling — well, for us anyway!

Thank you to every player, parent and family who made Summer Camp 2026 what it was.

If your child has caught the rugby bug, our term-time Saturday morning sessions at Eastbourne Rugby Club are the perfect next step — head to our booking page to secure a spot.

See you on the pitch! 🏉

— The 360 Rugby Team

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