Naked rugby players return with their 2019 calendar celebrating body positivity
Teams from across Britain have stripped to raise awareness of male cancer
By Steve Brown
More than 70 rugby players have dropped their kits to celebrate body positivity and male cancer awareness in a new calendar.
The Naked Rugby Players calendar has returned with a Renaissance theme following the success of their first edition and it sees six inclusive rugby clubs around Britain stripping down to raise awareness of male cancer.
Cisgender and trans men from Glasgow, Brighton, Liverpool, Bristol, Sheffield and Northampton rugby teams braved the snow and rain to bare all on the pitch, locker rooms as well as the showers for the new calendar.
The calendar launched last year helped raise thousands of pounds for the clubs involved and for the charity partner, Balls to Cancer.
Monty McKinnen, who had the pleasure of photographing the rugby players, said: “If there is a connection between art and rugby then we were determined to drag it to the fore, kicking and screaming, if necessary.
“With a few cleverly angled soft lights, hard shadows and some furlong and battle weary figures strewn about the place, maybe, just maybe, we thought we could pull of a bit of the Renaissance with this calendar in the few hours we had with each club.
“As with the first calendar our brief has always been the same, take the individuals as we find them. We didn’t want models, we wanted characters and, showing these characters in this artistic light, shows the beauty in us all.
“That which is in the eye of the beholder, sounds corny yes, but it’s a fact!”
Each year, around 200,000 men are diagnosed with cancer and 80,000 will die from the disease.
As with the first calendar, a proportion of the money raised through the sales will go to Balls to Cancer to help with research.
It is available to buy now on Amazon, TheNakedRugbyPlayers.com and TheGayShop.co.uk.
Watch a sneak peak below: