GARETH WALKER explains how over two decades as a rugby league reporter helped shape a new schools initiative.

THE IDEA for Literacy Kicks, a school programme that uses sport to engage children in writing, was formed in the press boxes of Wakefield, Wigan and Hull.

Being a rugby league journalist for over 20 years had been my dream job. From the moment a careers officer suggested to me at 15 that I could write about the sport I loved for a living, it’s all I ever wanted to do. What started with Saturday afternoons at Rochdale Mayfield and Saddleworth Rangers, and continued with every school holiday being spent in the League Express offices, culminated in becoming the Daily Mirror’s rugby league correspondent and covering World Cups and Tri-Nations in Australia and New Zealand.

I always felt incredibly fortunate.

But this notion that sport could be used as a vehicle to encourage children to develop their writing skills had been growing over a number of years, even more so after having two sports-mad children myself. I can clearly remember my son Leo carefully listing 20 five-figure numbers in perfect order at a young age – not because he loved maths, but because he wanted to work out which Premier League clubs had the biggest stadium capacities from a list in a football album.

Sport captures attention and imagination for so many.

So after sitting down to discuss the idea with my children’s head teacher Nick Ward – whose initial enthusiasm undoubtedly sparked a fire that might otherwise not have ignited – I spent around 12 months trialling a model where pupils become sports journalists for an hour at a time, watching highlights of matches or personalities and then creating their own newspaper articles.

Almost immediately it was received positively by schools and teachers who were unaware of anybody else combining sport and literacy in this way. Many of them helped in immeasurable ways to turn the initial idea into something that could be consistently effective in classrooms – from the use of Google Slides, to creating a Sports Journalist’s Writing Kit – including sentence starters and headline helpers – for every lesson.

By March 2022, I made the decision to leave journalism behind and focus entirely on building Literacy Kicks into being the best it could be. There were certainly no short cuts to it becoming viable – I quickly learned that word of mouth and recommendations between schools and teachers would be infinitely more valuable that emailing or posting information directly to heads, and that takes time for a new initiative. 

Now, approaching four years on, Literacy Kicks has worked with over 120 schools, major sporting events including the World Boxing Championships, governing bodies like Rounders England, and a host of professional clubs. Sporting icons Kevin Sinfield and two-time boxing world champion Natasha Jonas have joined us in schools to help add an extra dimension to the programme’s impact.

Rugby league has played a pivotal role in Literacy Kicks’ development.

As part of the concept of putting pupils into the shoes of a sports journalist, the introduction to the first lesson with every class in the first two years was playing the final 90 seconds of the 2020 Super League Grand Final, and describing what it was like to write a live match report as first Zak Hardaker’s long-range penalty drifts wide before Jack Welsby produced his unforgettable, season-deciding try. I’ve probably seen that clip more times than even the most ardent Saints fan.

The first bespoke project – most schools run a six-week writing programme which covers a variety of sports and journalism skills – came, somewhat perfectly, through my boyhood team Rochdale Hornets. The club’s foundation had secured a National Lottery heritage grant to record the history of Hornets’ unique link to Fiji dating back to the 1960s, the origins of which I had been told many times over the years by my dad.

The foundation’s Chris Tomlinson wanted an effective way of taking that into local schools, so we created a lesson that told the story of Joe Levula and Orisi Dawai arriving in Rochdale in 1961 after replying to a newspaper advert, sparking an unlikely link between two places on opposite sides of the world that remains today, with a large Fijian community in the town.

During its delivery in 13 Rochdale primary schools, I was joined in class by members of the Ratu family who have had three generations represent the club, and saw the impact that them speaking directly to pupils about their experiences had. 

It was something I wanted to repeat, and that opportunity came shortly afterwards through another rugby league club.

This time it was the Sheffield Eagles Foundation which had its own heritage project marking the 25th anniversary of the club’s memorable Wembley win over Wigan. The vision of the foundation’s Richard King and Andrea Dobson saw this project supplemented by rugby league coaching sessions provided by the Eagles alongside the writing workshops, and this time 1998 Challenge Cup winners Mark Aston and Keith Senior were present to recount details of their magical win to primary school children around the city.

The programme earned national recognition by winning the Celebrating Sporting Heritage in Schools award at a ceremony at Headingley.

A third heritage initiative came earlier this year, through a link with Julia Lee’s fantastic Women in Rugby League project. This time the focus of the lesson was the ground-breaking 1996 Great Britain Lionesses and their historic tour win in Australia. Team members Lucy Ferguson, Joanna Carr-Will and Jill Adams were present at schools in Featherstone, Doncaster and Hull to help tell their fascinating story.

One of the undoubted highlights of Literacy Kicks’ journey so far came when national hero Sinfield took the time to speak to children at his local school Greenfield Primary, with pupils having written articles on the story of his friendship with Rob Burrow and the impact that has had on the world. The lesson was created with the help of Sinfield and Leeds Rhinos media manager Phil Daly, and with the blessing of Rob’s family, and was universally the most popular of the 2024/25 six-week school programme with students and staff alike.

Just last month, Super League referees Jack Smith and James Vella helped to deliver one of this year’s sessions on the importance of match officials in sport. Again, their input was absolutely invaluable in offering pupils a unique insight into their sporting lives.

It’s been far from all rugby league in classrooms though, with football, athletics, the Paralympic Games, tennis, darts and even bobsleighing (yes, the story of the 1988 Jamaican team that inspired Cool Runnings) all featuring in lessons.

The World Boxing Championships project was a particular high, with the brilliant Jonas – the first ever woman to represent Great Britain in boxing at the Olympics – bringing her two world title belts into a Liverpool classroom for an unforgettable day that was covered by ITV Granada.

Non-league football clubs Ashton United, Marine FC and Stalybridge Celtic have all hosted groups of children that have completed the six-week writing course and then had the opportunity to become sports journalists for the day at a match.

Rounders England were a superb organisation to work with as we charted the long history of the popular sport, and next year, former England winger Ikram Butt’s British Asian Rugby Association will similarly take the story of their trailblazing journey into classrooms across Yorkshire.

Future projects include online workshops and a partnership with innovative app PE Pro (spearheaded by former Super League players Ryan Hudson and Jamie Cording among others), while another former Daily Mirror rugby league correspondent Dave Craven will start delivering sessions on the east side of the Pennines in 2026.

It’s been a thoroughly enjoyable journey so far and I’m indebted to too many others to list here that have helped Literacy Kicks reach the stage it has so far. There is still much to do and many different directions it could head in moving forwards, but that concept of using sport as a way of engaging children in writing will be at the centre of everything.

For more information on Literacy Kicks, including testimonials from schools and independently compiled data analysis on the impact of its programmes, see www.literacykicks.com.

First published in Rugby League World magazine, Issue 516 (January 2026)