It’s now just a few weeks since the Score WP Club Rugby sevens, our 2022 league finals and still Western Province Rugby continues to operate at full speed.
Several of our club rugby players are now five weeks into post-season training at the WP Rugby High-Performance center as we continue to see additional training and education for clubs as most are already getting ready for 2023.
Having now concluded testing and strength and conditioning our management structures are now into the rugby-specific phase which looks at match play and preparation. Players train weekly at the WP Rugby High-Performance Centre with a combination of gym and on-field sessions and it’s been refreshing to see the good turnout of club coaches who are also participating in the training sessions.
Already we see several clubs discussing pre-season friendlies and currently, our universities are busy with pre-season matches and various practice sessions against clubs from near and far as they get ready for the Varsity Cup.
In addition to the recent WP Rugby coaching course for women which saw just over thirty candidates in attendance our women rugby players also continue to train at an advanced level every week. The weekly sessions, held typically on Saturday mornings to accommodate our senior and younger players are showing some remarkable results as the physical and rugby skills become more evident week by week.
In addition to on-field training we now also move our attention to education for club rugby, and next week sees the continuation of our series of workshops aimed at empowering our club administrators. This multi-webinar series starts off with good governance at club level with the first week focused on constitutions, policies, by-laws, and norms and standards as we look to set the tone for good administration before 2023.
As the WPRFU we understand that most clubs will use the off-season to focus on administrative matters and as such we look to assist and bring focus to the details of good governance.
Additional workshops will again see the engagement of our MMS members ( Media Marketing and Sponsorship) representatives, additional workshops on club administration matters such as agendas, minutes, calendars and meeting procedures. A new module on filming and live streaming is now an exciting new addition for our club rugby members.
We urge our club rugby leadership to look out for correspondence from the WPRFU with more information and to ensure that as many clubs executive members as possible attend the webinars and workshops. The registration and nomination methods is included in all correspondence.
We also remind our clubs that all clubs should by now have a women’s rugby representative seconded at their club and those that have not done so yet, should do so now. This is particularly important for when we seek to invite a women’s rugby representative to any workshops dedicated to empowering our women, and we again emphasize that you do not need to have a team with matches in place to have this portfolio in place.
Our next WP Rugby Coaching course is on 9 December 2022, this is World Rugby level one fifteens coaching course designed to “get into rugby” and is the perfect way to get started with coaching and we urge everyone to sign up for this course now. Please click this link to sign up.