JENNY Bosley’s involvement in local rugby started when she agreed to help out at Harwell RFC for a fortnight – 30 years later and she is still going strong.

An ever-present on the touchlines, the county’s clubs will be seeing even more of her over the next two seasons.

In July, Bosley became the first woman to be elected president of the Oxfordshire Rugby Football Union (RFU).

It means cutting back on her duties at Harwell – where she first started helping the club’s then fixtures secretary Brian Flanders in 1988/89.

“The couple of weeks turned into 30 years,” said Bosley. “Most of which has been extremely enjoyable for the sport that we both love.”

Of course, ‘we’ refers to her husband Doug, who is now Oxfordshire RFU’s chair of representative rugby.

Having watched her other half play for Harwell, Jenny was asked if she could help out with the club’s fixtures in the 1988-89 season due to Flanders’s growing involvement with the county.

By the time he became Oxfordshire RFU’s president in 1991, a permanent replacement had still not been found.

Jenny, therefore, fully took on the role and, with Doug, gradually began to become more involved with the county.

She became the disciplinary secretary in 2005, as well as safeguarding officer two years ago, while they are both involved in the running of the Oxfordshire Cup and Shield.

Now elected president, Jenny has been overwhelmed by the backing she has received from the county’s clubs.

She said: “I feel very privileged.

“I’m not the first woman president in rugby. Other counties have had them, so have other clubs, but for Oxfordshire I am and I’m very honoured to be so.

“The support I’ve had from the clubs means an awful lot.

“I don’t want to be an ivory tower. I want to be out amongst them because that’s the only way to see what is going on.”

She added: “I’m president for two years which is something Oxfordshire haven’t done recently.

“We used to have a one-year term and we believed it just wasn’t long enough to get around all of the clubs.”