England Students Women to be led by Andrew Ford and Poppy Leitch as new era begins
Andrew Ford and Poppy Leitch have taken up roles within the re-established England Students Women programme
©BUCS
After a 20-year hiatus, the England Students Women’s programme is returning this summer, and Hartpury University’s Andrew Ford has been appointed as head coach while Exeter University’s Poppy Leitch will be assistant coach.
This year's Women’s BUCS Super Rugby Coach of the Season guided Hartpury to a third successive league title, and Ford will now head up the England Students Women’s programme with a fixture against the UK Armed Forces to come later this summer.
“The strength of the university system is unbelievable, and the more exposure we can get to it, the better,“ Ford exclusively tells TRU.
“There is a gap that needs to be bridged between that step up between university rugby and Premiership Women's Rugby, and a programme where you get to wear a red rose, sing the national anthem and you get to come together as a group for a common purpose and goal is so exciting."
Ford has been the head coach of Hartpury since July 2023, but has been an integral part of the system for many years, having been backs and attack coach for Gloucester-Hartpury in PWR as well as spending time within the men’s set-up.
Success has seemingly followed him everywhere, winning three PWR championships as well as seven university titles.
Finishing just two points behind Hartpury in Women's BUCS Super Rugby in 2024/25 were Exeter University, led by Ford's assistant Leitch.
Leitch has been a stalwart of the Exeter programme for several years. She was part of the university set up as a player, winning two championship titles, and has gone on to become Exeter Chiefs Women’s first ever centurion as well as captaining the club.
As a coach, she was voted BUCS Women’s Coach of the Season in 2022/23 after leading the Green and Whites to the Women's National League final [now Women's BUCS Super Rugby] and has since taken Exeter to back-to-back semi-finals.
She has also helped to develop several players who have gone on to play alongside her in the PWR set-up, such as Katie Buchanan, Niamh Orchard and Sophie Langford.
“I’m super pleased that it [England Students Women] has officially launched, and obviously, to be a part of it alongside Fordy as well is going to be a super exciting experience,” Leitch tells TRU.
“There's something super special about university rugby, and to be able to add something to that pathway is massive.
“To also be able to recognise some of the players that we've got within our institutions that maybe don't get a huge amount of coverage elsewhere because they're not playing in the PWR on a regular basis, or maybe they're not part of a traditional England pathway, I think is a great thing to be a part of.
“We’re really excited for players across all the institutions that are going to be involved, and it's going to be an exciting time in August.”
The England Students Women’s programme was halted in 2005 due to the development of alternative performance pathways, but some notable names have represented the side, including Heather Fisher and Tamara Taylor.
However, with the programme now being re-established, Ford and Leitch were full of enthusiasm for what it could bring.
“I did a brief stint at Exeter, and I got to know Poppy, and I could tell from within meetings that I was in, and the way she was around that environment in general, you could tell 'that is a coach!'” Ford adds.
“The work she's done with the university team that went from getting moved down a league, to bringing them back up, to getting straight into a final is unbelievable, and I think that speaks volumes to the programme she’s built.
“With my emphasis on backs and attack, and Poppy's work with defence and set pieces, I think we complement each other well, and I want Poppy to challenge me and I want to challenge Poppy around what we think is right for this.
“Although we work in the same space, we've had different experiences. We bring different things to the table, and it's how we put that all together and get a group of people to buy into it.”
The squad that Ford and Leitch will pick this summer will be littered with stars from the university game. Women's BUCS Super Rugby is increasingly becoming a recognised breeding ground for future top-class PWR talent, with many players making the switch post-graduation or even whilst at university.
“I think that there’s been a real interest over the last 12 months in Women’s BUCS Super Rugby,” Leitch explains.
“University pathway stuff, to me, is probably what gets me up in the morning, being able to be a part of it and make a difference over a three-year, four-year period with the player, and then seeing them accelerate from a career standpoint as well as a rugby career standpoint.
“PWR clubs, especially with EPQ stipulations being placed upon them by the league, are going to start relying on institutions to be a real significant part of their pathway."
“Unlike in the men’s game, in the women’s game, our academy space is BUCS Super Rugby," Ford adds.
“These programmes across the country are doing so well and are getting better and better resourced, and England Students also gives us as coaches an opportunity to see how we can be collaborative and grow the game.
"It allows us to link up with other coaches around the league and find out what they're doing, what their best practice is, and what girls do they want to put forward and just improve all the time.
“One thing we're very conscious of as Women's BUCS Super Rugby coaches is that we don't always follow the same trends as the men.
“And I think, yes, we've got this programme as the banner, but the way it's run and the criteria towards it could look slightly different to what the men's do.
“And off the back of that, it creates the kind of culture and environment we want, and then we want to get the right people into that environment to succeed.”
