The GROGS policy of diversity and inclusion broke new barriers at the first Lunch of 2024 when Rosa Innes and Megan Gaffney from the School of Hard Knocks charity addressed a record January attendance of 120 GROGs. Acting as a team, these young ladies described an aspect of rugby which most of the audience were unaware of. Since 2017, the School of Hard Knocks has used the medium of rugby to reach out to people of all ages living in challenging circumstances. However, it wasn’t just the charity we heard about, the bonus being that Megan was a much capped Scottish rugby internationalist with 45 caps who could teach us all a lesson about the supposedly disappearing work ethic. At the beginning of her international career she also studied for a Master’s Degree at Edinburgh University and worked in a pub to earn the money that rugby didn’t provide. She didn’t play rugby for the money or the glory but because she loved it. Being an influence on youngsters is also very important to her. Playing for the Barbarians was Megan’s career highlight and although she is retired from the top level she still participates in club rugby. She explained how she has been heavily involved in the SoHK for the last 4 years before seamlessly passing the microphone to Rosa to explain more about the charity. Rosa quickly established that not many in the audience had heard of the SoHK and set about explaining its purpose and ethos. They use rugby to help marginalised, disadvantaged and vulnerable people of all ages and without exclusion to attain certain ambitions in their lives. Rosa may not have played rugby but she is certainly an excellent speaker and her enthusiasm for her work was almost brimming over. She explained about the origins of the charity and the 2 programmes they run - an 8 week course for adults and a full school year course for schoolchildren. Currently there are 350 youngsters deemed to be “at risk” on the programmes. She described some of the re-humanising elements to these programmes to help people get their dignity back and read parts of a moving letter from a 64 year old who had participated in, what he called, the ‘rough and the rougher’ of the programme to help in his healing. Both Rosa and Megan dealt skilfully with a number of good questions from the floor and more than earned the bottles of Special GROGS Whisky they were presented with for their sparkling deliveries.