This new partnership sees both parties come together to provide the young children and parents, who support didi classes, the opportunity to purchase customised ‘Our Sporting Journey’ books.

The books have been tailored for those specifically involved in the didi rugby programme and will encourage plenty of activity and interaction away from the classes, thus furthering their sporting education.

The ‘Our Sporting Journey’ series for didi minis (18 months to 3 years old), didi juniors (3 to 4 years old) and didi seniors (5 to 6 years old) incorporates two sporting years in each book with the cricket versions of the books likely due out later this year.

‘Our Sporting Journey’ is a series of interactive books for children, putting them at the heart of the sporting experience. They allow them to have plenty of fun, grow as people both on and off the field and immerse themselves in their sporting experience as they progress through their sporting journey.

​The books all have plenty of activities for children and encourage positive interaction between children and their parents. They involve plenty of parental involvement, whether that be in having positive conversations, playing in the garden or helping to stick in the pictures that will allow everyone to build up a memory book that will last a lifetime.

didi rugby founder and CEO Vicky Macqueen said it was a very exciting collaboration with WWPIS.

‘We fully believe that our values and ethos as didi rugby are fully in-line with the wonderful work that WWPIS do.  We are all keen to get children and parents involved, at an early age, of realising the benefits that are to be gained from being physically active. This partnership will enable us to influence more families to get involved in physical activities from the age of our early didi classes (18 months) upwards.

WWPIS have being doing some amazing work and, like us, are keen to promote healthy and active lifestyles, so we are delighted to be able to link up with them on this project.’

Gordon MacLelland (CEO of WWPIS) said: ‘It is really exciting to be working with the didi team. It is so important that children have the very best experiences of sport from the youngest ages, so they remain involved in sport and physical activity throughout their childhoods and into adulthood. Vicky and her didi rugby team are doing excellent work in this area and we hope the support that we can provide will further enhance their programmes.’

It is not just limited to the NZ rugby union, the English RFU have made huge strides with the ‘New Rules of Play’ adopted in recent years and hopefully generations of children will benefit from such approaches.