I recently met up with Willem de Jong, the new president of the Netherlands Rugby Union, to talk about Dutch rugby. I quizzed him on his ambitions to make the men (and women) in Orange a force in European rugby.

I started off by asking Willem about the current state of rugby in the Netherlands and how he sees things developing in the next few years.

Willem de Jong (WdJ): There are now over 10,000 registered players in the Netherlands, that’s double the number from just five or six years ago. One of the main drivers for this big increase is the introduction of rugby in schools.