ONE OF the most promising young rugby players that Skipton has produced for many years has been forced to make a decision that only a decade ago, would have been unthinkable: the controversial switch of codes from union to league.

The player involved is just 13 years of age. And the cause of this reluctant decision: she's a girl!

Vicki Procter is something of a sporting phenomenon despite being barely into her teens. She is an all round athlete, top cross-country runner, a canoeist, and captain of the Aireville School football team. But, most of all, she is a total rugby fanatic.

She has been playing with the various mixed sex mini-sections at Skipton RFC since she was five, along with her brother Charlie, and has won so many 'man of the match' awards that she can no longer count then.

But when last season came to an end, so did her career as full back or winger for the Skipton youth teams. For RFU rules forbid mixed-sex teams after the age of 13 and Skipton does not support a girls' team. Nor, for that matter, does any other rugby union club in Yorkshire.

This was discovered after months of research - and hundreds of motoring miles - by Vicki's mum, Sarah, who herself has supported Skipton since she was five, and her partner, Kevin, who ironically once played rugby league for Halifax.

But there is a thriving girls' rugby league scene in the county. So she joined the under-14s girls' section at Middleton RL club in Leeds but that is far from the end of the story.

Despite being new to the laws of rugby league, where she now plays hooker and wing, she was quickly spotted by the game's talent scouts and this week came tremendous news.

She has been selected for an elite training squad for the Yorkshire county girls' RL teams and has just started an intensive 10-weeks' training before she plays her first county game against - of all opponents - Lancashire in the spring.