ROCHFORD Hundred's girls' side are hoping England's World Cup winning heroics will inspire more youngsters to take up the sport.

Tina Turner has been running female teams at Magnolia Road for the past 11 years, alongside her husband Pete.

And she would love more girls to start playing the game.

“It's difficult to keep it going and we have to merge with Medway for a lot of our matches so it would be great if we got more girls along to play,” said Turner.

“It was quite hard to find where to watch the England games at the World Cup but there's been plenty of publicity since then and hopefully we can get more players off the back of that.

“The RFU is aiming to get 10,000 more players by 2017 which would be great.

“But right now we have girls travelling from all over Essex to come in to train and play and we have around 13 matches a season.

“We don't actually have a ladies team at the moment which is a shame but we cater for players of all ages and abilities up to when they're 18 and everyone seems to enjoy it.”

Rochford have also secured plenty of success with a number of their players going on to earn international honours.

Katherine Pugh, Lucy Woods, Maddie Lockwood, Nat McLaren and Charlotte Miccalleff all starred for England at some level.

And Turner now hopes more will go on to follow them.

“We have talented girls here but the best thing about them is the spirit among them all because they are all so close,” said Turner.

“They all get on and they also welcome new girls in to the group.

“I think it's great because we have players of all shapes and sizes and rugby gives them something to play.

“We actually set the team up because my daughter was fed up of having to watch my son play and wanted to play herself.

“We're still going now and we run the county team too so we're very involved in the female side of the sport.”

The team hold regular sessions on a Wednesday evening, weather permitting and for more details contact Tina on 07733 024317.