Claire DuRose, lead manager–UK Student Recruitment for the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants, and Vince Mayne, CEO of England Touch rugby, joined the FM podcast to explain the benefits of participating in team sport for students, specifically how team sport can grow skills and increase employability for finance graduates.
They discuss the ways team sport can prepare management accounting students for challenging environments at work, build deeper professional relationships, and help them through the interview process.
DuRose and Mayne also highlight what participating in team sport can give young professionals that academic and other extracurricular frameworks can’t.
What you’ll learn from this episode:
- The project goals for CIMA’s collaboration with England Touch rugby.
- The soft skills that touch rugby can help finance students build.
- “Super skills” that can help students prepare for interviews and work.
- The value of team sport in building deeper bonds in the workplace.
- How participation in team sport can grow leaders’ perspectives.
Play the episode below or read the edited transcript:
— To comment on this episode or to suggest an idea for another episode, contact Steph Brown at Stephanie.Brown@aicpa-cima.com.
Transcript
Steph Brown: Hi, listeners. Welcome back to the FM podcast. I’m your host, Steph Brown. On this episode, we’ll be talking about CIMA’s partnership with England Touch rugby, the interplay between business skills and sport, the parallels between those disciplines, and specifically what skills future finance professionals can bring from the pitch to their careers.
Joining me for this episode is Claire DuRose, lead manager of UK Student Recruitment at CIMA, and Vince Mayne, CEO of England Touch.
Welcome, Claire and Vince. Thanks for coming on the podcast.
First, can you tell listeners about the collaboration between CIMA and England Touch rugby, how it came about, and what its goals are?
Claire DuRose: At CIMA, we spend a lot of time talking to students and employers, and one thing that comes through quite clearly is that soft skills really matter and make quite a difference. So, skills such as communication, decision-making, teamwork — and they’re not always learned in lectures.
That’s where England Touch came in. Touch is fast-paced, inclusive. It’s a rapidly growing sport within the university space, which is where we’re focusing, and it felt like a natural fit.
The partnership is about supporting university students to develop those real-world skills through sport while also helping England Touch grow the game on campus as UK-wide. It’s all about backing students who want to challenge themselves both on and off the pitch.
Brown: Thanks, Claire.
What can touch rugby offer people preparing to move into the workplace, particularly management accounting students, that higher education or work experience can’t necessarily provide?
DuRose: First, I think touch puts you in situations where you have to think on your feet, where you’re making decisions under pressure, where you’re working with different personalities, responding when things don’t go to plan, and doing all of this in real time.
In the workplace, especially in management accounting, that’s exactly what happens. Things change quickly, information isn’t always perfect, and you still have to make those good calls. So, touch rugby gives you that safe space in a supportive way to practice and gain those soft skills before you ever step into those graduate work environments.
Vince Mayne: I think you’ve touched on some really good points, but teamwork is a real crucial one, and it’s not just about collaborating. It’s working together towards a common goal because you also need to trust the people around you. You all want to score a try as a team. It’s not who scores it in the end: It’s making sure your team succeeds.
Now, Claire, you talked about the communication skills. But things like determination and resilience — if you’re 2–0 down with two minutes to go, have you got that determination and resilience to still keep going to score the try? But, also, in work to meet the deadline, to get the piece of work done that you need to do.
Critically, I suppose, within touch, because it’s so fast moving, that innovation and creativity really comes to the fore. And that’s something more and more that employers are looking for. How do we innovate? How do we create something new, more effective, more efficient? And that applies, absolutely, within the workplace.
Brown: For those who might not know, briefly, what is the difference between traditional rugby and touch rugby?
Mayne: There are effectively three codes of rugby: rugby union; 15-a-side, rugby league; 13-a-side, and touch rugby. Touch rugby is six-a-side. Rugby union, rugby league are full contact. There’s lots of tackles, etc., going in. Touch is minimal contact. So, to tackle somebody, you touch them. It includes their hair or their kit, and it’s a little bit about honesty. Were you touched or did you touch someone? So, the ref can’t necessarily see it all the time.
But touch is very inclusive. It can be played under men’s, women’s, and mixed formats. All age groups, so right from youth up to 60-plus. You can play with somebody at school. You can play at college, at university, and you can play for England or in a club format across a mix: three men, three women on a pitch. The pitch is slightly smaller than a normal rugby pitch. But also, because it’s minimal contact, you don’t tend to get the high-impact bits that rugby union, rugby league gets, so concussion isn’t such a major problem for us.
Also, critically, for management accountants going to work on a Monday morning with bits hanging off and black eyes and all sorts of things, that doesn’t tend to happen with touch, either. It fits very well into workplace. You have a lot of workplace leagues, etc., running across the country.
Brown: That’s really interesting how you mentioned that you have to be a bit honest in this sport. That draws parallels in the accounting profession where there’s a lot of emphasis on ethics and integrity.
But I guess in terms of wider skill development, what sets team sport apart from what could be considered traditionally academic extracurriculars and even individual sport?
DuRose: I think team sport throws you into that live collaboration. You have to communicate clearly, adapt quickly, support others, and sometimes take the lead, as Vince said, whilst working towards the shared goal.
In individual sport or academic activities, you can rely more on your own pace and your own planning, and team sport challenges you to work with others in unpredictable situations, which is exactly how most modern workplaces operate.
Mayne: The only thing I would add to that, we’ve been talking about soft skills. I guess I would talk about super skills: The things that people bring that are real strengths that don’t sit within a qualification or an academic framework — they’re the extra bit, so I would call them super skills.
One of those is about trust. If I’m playing centre position, I’ve got to trust that the people outside me are going to do their jobs, and I’m not constantly looking over my shoulder. Team sport does that; individual sports and academic disciplines don’t give you that opportunity to work together and develop a trust.
I think that’s something that team sport is very different. The other bit to it: It’s fun. It really is fun. We know lots of examples of people making friends for life through their team sport, and as they move into their careers, they’re still in touch. Whether that’s across management accounting or whether it’s across different industry sectors, they do stay in touch. And that provides a really supportive network for people, which is something that other sports, other individual sports, and certainly the academic bit don’t offer.
I’ve never heard of anyone going back to their university necessarily to meet up with their academic course mates, but they will go back for a pass weekend to play sport against the current students and so on.
Brown: Vince, from your conversations with students involved in touch rugby, are there any lessons they’ve taken from this experience that stood out to you?
Mayne: A lot of the students talk about the friendship and the camaraderie that the competition gives them, not just within their own team but across the teams.
It’s lovely when Claire’s come to some of our university touch championship events. You see students who are at school together. They’re at different universities, but they’re still playing touch, and they have a laugh. And yes, they compete really rigorously on the pitch, but they’re still in touch with each other.
The friendship and the competition element are key things. But also, we’ve been working with them to try to, I suppose, educate softly in a way, encourage them to keep playing sport because what we do know is students who play sport are happier than the average student.
They’re much more likely to get an interview. They’re much more likely then to secure that job, and they will earn more throughout their career than those students who don’t play sport. There’s a really good hard edge to why they should continue playing sport, and they see that. They know that it does them good. Also, we know that it’s good for them both physically and mentally.
Sport provides something for students that nothing else can.
DuRose: Vince mentioned, obviously, the national championships, which is the university national championships that CIMA sponsors. When we go along to those, we talk to the students and ask what they gained from being involved in touch rugby and everything like that, and a lot of students talk about confidence, not just on the pitch, but in themselves.
They feel more comfortable speaking up and making decisions and dealing with any setbacks. One thing that really stands out when we have chats with them at these events is to how well they can explain what they’ve learned. They don’t just say, “I played sport.” They can talk about leadership, resilience, teamwork, and problem-solving.
That’s incredibly powerful in interviews, and that’s particularly the reason why, obviously, I said at the beginning of this is our collaboration came about as to what the employers are essentially looking for.
Brown: Thank you, both.
Claire, what are employers looking for from graduates now? You touched on about the confidence element, but how does team sport come into play based on those conversations with employers?
DuRose: Employers still want strong technical ability, obviously, but what they really want and what really sets graduates apart are their power skills, and Vince alluded to this a bit earlier, things like communication, adaptability, critical thinking, and collaboration.
Team sport shows employers you can work with others, take feedback, handle pressure, and keep going when things get really tough. That combination of the technical knowledge and real-world skills is what employers are asking for.
When you’re going into your first career after being in academic institutions all your life at school, at university, and then into employment, employers are not, in an interview, asking for you or wanting you to know exactly how to do that job. But what they’re wanting to see is those soft skills and what you can bring to that job.
A lot of them do like hearing in interviews the extracurricular stuff that people do because that’s where you gain the soft skills, and that’s what I think a lot of these younger people going into their first jobs really need to know. That’s a big power skill that they can bring to an interview. It’s a great talking point that they can bring in and not have to worry, “Oh, I haven’t done the job already. How do I prove I can do it?” These are things that they want to hear about.
Brown: You’ve both provided a really great overview of team sport’s impact on upskilling and employability for students, especially when they’re moving into the interview process all the way into preparing for the workplace.
But I’m interested to hear your thoughts on what leaders or more seasoned professionals could gain from participating in team sport that could help them improve in their roles.
DuRose: I think team sport is a great reminder of what good leadership looks like. It keeps you sharp. It keeps you practising with your listening skills and decision-making and pushes you out of your comfort zone.
Even for experienced professionals, being part of a team where success depends on — as we’ve mentioned before — trust, communication can be incredibly valuable and, honestly, a lot of fun, too. And for that mental health side of things, as well, I think it’s really important nowadays.
Brown: Vince, as someone who has ascended into a CEO position, what have you gained from sport?
Mayne: I’ve been really lucky across my career to talk to some big leaders in successful sporting organisations, like the Olympic Games, in multinationals, and many of them attribute their success to having played sport right throughout their career and their life.
I guess sport is a great leveller. You have a role as a CEO or as a manager or leader, but in sports kit, everyone’s the same. You’re not a manager or a CEO. You’re just another player. Remembering that you are just another person within an organisation and that everyone has a role to play is really important, I think, for a leader to acknowledge. It creates better bonds across an organisation, provides, I suppose, a supportive environment within the team.
I can remember working in a big university where I would send emails to somebody in finance: “Can you do this? Can you do that?” Often, if I was late on a deadline or whatever. And you get a response that was, “OK.” Then, I did some social sport, and one of the people I played with was a lady from finance, and we got to know each other. The next time I sent an email, the response was different because she knew me as somebody different than the person at the other end of that email.
That personal interaction really makes a difference. That’s what helps, I suppose, the connection at a human level for an organisation to become much more high functioning as a team. Nothing worse than having a team with 11 leaders in it because they all want to take that front step. Actually, everyone has a role, and everyone should acknowledge the role and the strengths. And it comes back to that trust bit, that you trust the other people around you to do their roles. If finance don’t do theirs, the organisation stops. If IT don’t do theirs, everything stops.
Everyone has a role. But as a leader, acknowledging the strengths of the people within your team, for me, is absolutely critical.
Brown: Thank you, both, so much. I think that’s a really great note to close this episode on. But before we depart fully, for any members looking to learn more about England Touch rugby or get involved, where can they find out more?
Mayne: You can go to www.englandtouch.org.uk or @EnglandTouch on Instagram. There’s lots of information about where to play, clubs you can get involved with.
Or if you do want to come and watch, this August we are hosting the European youth championships at the University of Warwick, which will be a great event. We have 45 teams from across the world. Although it’s Euros, we also have China, Singapore, and one other nation which escapes me. It’s a little bit more than the Europeans, but it’ll be really good, high quality. And there’s the under 20s, who are the ripe, harvest-ready for universities to pick up, so it will be an interesting one to come and watch.
Check on the website. There’s a calendar of all activity, and so you can see what other events are available throughout summer.
DuRose: Also, I’d say, if you’re listening, if you or your son or daughter or niece or nephew or whatever is at university, we’ve obviously got CIMA-sponsored England Touch ambassadors on campus, and I think it’s about 19 universities across the UK. And this is only looking to grow within our sponsorship and our collaboration.
Also, if you know anyone who wants to become one; who wants to set up a touch team at the university, please get in touch with England Touch or ourselves, and we can definitely look at helping you grow that team on campus.
But there’s also lots of events, as Vince said, to look out for and get involved in.
Brown: That’s great. Thank you, both, so much. Thanks again, Claire and Vince.
