North Wales Touch

Touch is a minimal-contact sport that shares similarities with rugby union and rugby league.  It initially developed as a training tool for rugby league (see the History page), but has since developed into a sport in its own right.

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The objective of the game, like many other team sports, is to simply score more points than your opponents.  To score a point, you ground the ball, which is of a similar shape to a standard rugby ball, in the score zone at the end of the pitch, very much in the same way that it is done in its "big brother" sports.

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There are six players from each team on the pitch at a time, but up to fourteen in the squad in total, and players are allowed to substitute on and off the pitch at will throughout the game.

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What sets Touch apart from the vast majority of other sports is that it is a truly mixed game - both males and females compete on the same team.  There are very few other sports that do this.

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Similar to rugby league, the team has six "touches" to advance up the field and score before the ball is turned over to the opposition.  Unlike rugby league, there is no physical tackling - all it takes is any contact between the ball-carrier and a defender, so it is a very safe game.  Injuries in the game are very, very rare.

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A standard game of touch consists of two halves of 20 minutes with a 5 minute half time break.

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In the last few years, the game has exploded across the world and especially in the UK.

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To give you an idea of what the game looks like, there are few better examples than the 2018 European Touch Championships Mixed Open Final between Wales and Scotland: