On Tuesday evening the Pcubed Varsity match will take place at the Richmond Athletic Ground in South-West London.

More than a little surprising are the figures given by a spokesman at the RFL that rugby league is the third most popular sport played at Oxford University and the fifth choice at Cambridge.

Left: Phil Clarke, one of the student game's best known products. Pic:Allsport.

Although the most highly publicised game in the student rugby league calendar, it is by no means the standard bearer of its parent body - Student Rugby League Ltd.

Niel Wood, a former Liverpool University graduate, Great Britain students representative and Ireland coach (both at student and full-international levels) has been at the helm for four years, following in the footsteps of Bev Risman. He has taken up Risman’s mantle and overseen the expansion of the game at collegiate level. One of his first policy guidelines was a re-structuring of the student game as a whole.

“We had a fairly good foundation laid by Bev Risman, all I had to do was massage around the edges and get the competition more streamlined. I’ve increased the number of competitions so that it’s a proper league - with a home and away structure - and then put in a comprehensive and co-ordinated approach to the representative programme.

“We have a system of regional selection, and then for England, Scotland, Wales, Ireland and ultimately Great Britain and Ireland. There is a national league of eight teams which is unique in student sport with teams from Durham, St Mary’s in Twickenham, Loughborough, Cardiff, Leeds, Liverpool, Warrington and Chester.

“Below that we have nine regional leagues, ranging from a league that covers the North East down to a league that covers Wales and the West.”

The growth of the game has continued ever since the first student side was born at Leeds University in 1967. Portsmouth and Swansea were early non-traditional areas to accept the game and now teams from Greenwich, Hertfordshire, Bedford and Luton, to name only a few teams in the South, fly the league flag – a flag that can be seen waving from nearly every major university in England.

“We’ve been on a fairly steady growth pattern for 15 years. My attitude now is that I’m not looking for a big number of new teams. What I want is more teams within each college and university so that each one has second and third teams out. We want to increase the depth. I want to see us having more under-19’s playing and teams at schools and colleges, I want to see women’s teams.

“The best way is the schools system. We provide that outlet for kids when they finish school, but we also provide a safety net for kids who go to university and find out that when they reach 18 everything changes. That’s a pretty good time for them to try their hand at rugby league.

“60% of the players that register with us have never played rugby league before they come to university. 60%. That’s 1000 players a year and just at university level. We’re in a fairly embryonic stage with our under-19’s organisation, but whilst it’s embryonic we know where we’re going with it. We have competitions set up in London, the West Midlands, and in Ireland and the North East.”

With a monitored expanse of the playing pool, an increase in quality is the logical boon to the game at its highest levels, with the professional clubs all searching for another Phil Clarke or Barrie-Jon Mather.

“The 30 professional clubs are just waking up to it really. Oldham, under Mike Ford, have been brilliant. Sibson, Dodds and Rich are all former student rugby league players while Paul Smith of Swinton only got a chance after winning British student honours.” Wood estimates that there is somewhere in the region of 21 products of student rugby league in the Northern Ford Premiership.

The international side continues with a full tour Down Under plus an emerging tour to the States this year.

“The one thing I pride myself on is that we’re focused, we plan and we go to where we’re planning to go. We follow our plans through. We want to develop the sport and we want to spread it geographically, primarily with teams in Scotland and Ireland.

For more information on the Student Rugby League contact the student rugby league website.