Rugby Festival

St Jo’s doing what St Jo’s does best – you can be part of it

Your thoughts might well be on holidays and cooling off poolside but the rugby season will be back with us before you know it! Please update your calendar now – the 37th St Joseph’s College Rugby Festival will take place on Saturday 21 and Sunday 22 October, with the OB games (rugby and netball) the previous evening. It coincides with the 2023 Rugby World Cup

We will email more details a little nearer the time and set up a Facebook event. But the bottom line is Your College Needs You! Please contact Mr David Kemsley, our Futures Advisor, (d.kemsley@stjos.co.uk) if you are interested in playing. The Festival grows and grows and we have a waiting list of top schools hoping to take part. Our own rugby players will be back at the College for pre-season training from 14 August.

Our ambition for the event, already known as the ‘king maker’ in honour of its pivotal role in shaping future professional careers in the sport, has prompted us to take another massive leap forward. St Joseph’s College Festival is going global!

The school has been working hard over the past few months to expand what is regarded as the most prestigious school sport festival in the UK to a new level. We are taking it to a worldwide audience to broaden access and opportunity to more age groups and across multiple sports. Introducing a new stage each year at world-class venues, the St Joseph’s College Global Festival will grow towards a seven-stage event that offers a comprehensive experience for all and is shared across the world via our broadcasting partners NextGenXV.

After Stage One in the UK, which will always be held at St Jo’s in October, the second stage will be taking place in Barcelona next February half term;

U15 Boys Football

(Friday 16–Tuesday 20 February)

U17 Boys Rugby

(Friday 16–Tuesday 20 February)

U18 Girls Football

(Wednesday 21–Sunday 25 February)

U11 Girls Football

(Wednesday 21–Sunday 25 February)

U11 Boys Rugby

(Wednesday 21–Sunday 25 February)

OB Sportsman travels the world

Exciting times for OB Joshua Apple, now a professional basketball player. Josh a former boarder at The Mews, dropped into the College recently to bring us up to date on his career since leaving St Jo’s in 2016. A first-rate rugby player, who had been in the reserve Festival squad and then the squad proper for 2015, his talent at basketball was increasingly evident.

Following a year at Copleston High School, Josh was offered a scholarship at East Central University in Oklahoma. He stayed at the College for five years – extended due to Covid provisions – studying Business marketing and Investment Banking. He wasn’t the only Brit in the school, which was also home to a softball player from Bury St Edmunds. Having graduated, he came back across the Atlantic and has just completed his first pro contract, a year with Calais Basket. He is now considering his options and has promised to keep us posted.

OB Props

These two OBs were propping against each other on Friday night in the West Country Varsity match - Bristol University v Bath University. It was a somewhat brutal game but it was all friends afterwards for Wilfred Kemsley and Josh Cilia, who both left St Jo’s in 2020.