Keighley Cougars will start a brand new initiative at attracting more young people to their matches when they play Workington Town at Cougar Park on Sunday, May 31.

They will be introducing the ‘Cougar Crawl’ which is a version of the popular ‘walking bus’ system when schoolchildren walk to their school on an organised group.

The ‘Cougar Crawl’ will see a group headed by the club’s furry mascot Freddie Cougar walk from Keighley town centre to Cougar Park with three official ‘stops’ to pick up more kids along the way.

Dean Muir, the Cougars Community Foundation Manager, said: “When Freddie and children have walked down from town centre they will walk a couple of laps of the Cougar Park pitch.

“This will all count towards their 30-minutes of daily exercise.

“So, besides introducing more of the town’s young people to professional Rugby League we will be working to deliver the anti-obesity and fitness messages”.

The ‘Cougar Crawl’ will start from the War Memorial on
North Street, crossing Cavendish Street into Lawkholme Lane and over the A629 trunk road into Cougar Park.

It is envisaged that there will be three stops on the journey and that the group organisers will be road safety trained as well as authorised to work alongside young people.

When I read this my head was in a spin. How lucky are we to be supporting a club which does not just talk the CSR talk but actually gets off its butt and really engages with everyone it can possibly engage with in the community and always in such novel and innovative ways.

Hats off again, albeit I ran out of hats a while ago.

Got to say I am impressed with the way you are using ' Freddie ' as a marketing tool to engage with the kids and the people of the town , keep it up

All you need to do now is get the rest of the championship owners/chairmen round a table and beat into them that they need to look at all possible methods of marketing their clubs

Market or die , the kids of our towns are our future ignore them at our peril