THREE pupils from Herefordshire schools had the time of their lives at a recent Six Nations fixture.

Guy Deacon, 14, from Kingstone High School, and Brad Bridges and Richard Goodchild from year nine at The Hereford Academy had a special day out at Twickenham Stadium, appearing on the pitch before kick-off at the England v Italy match.

Guy, Brad and Richard proudly represented their individual schools as part of the All Schools programme, an England Rugby initiative to get more state secondary schools playing rugby. They were all wearing bespoke rugby shirts which were designed by a group of pupils from their respective schools at a Canterbury Kit Design workshop held last year.

The programme saw 100 schools take part in the latest workshops, each designing a rugby shirt for their school team to play in. Canterbury took their designs away and put them into production, with the final results being unveiled on the pitch in front of an 82,000 crowd.

One pupil from each school was chosen to take part in the celebrations. Their day began with a presentation of their new shirts before making their way outside to form a guard of honour to welcome the England and Italy teams out. The group had pictures taken with two of England Women’s World Cup winners, Sarah Hunter and Emily Scarratt.

Chris Stephenson, CEO of Canterbury said: “We have been a big supporter of All Schools since the beginning; it’s now in its third year and it is an amazing programme which has already shown fantastic results among the schools taking part. I know the students will feel proud wearing a shirt they’ve personally designed, seeing all the unique designs together on the pitch was a great spectacle for us to witness and hopefully a very proud moment for them.”