We are now just over a month into the new year and already we are seeing plenty of rugby movement in Western Province as our DHL WP Rugby seniors sides tackle the season circuits, our clubs gearing up for action, and our coaching courses have started rolling out.
Last week saw several of our clubs join us in a planning session at the Sport Science Institute in Newlands. The evening saw quite a bit of excitement from the club delegates as the opportunity not only allowed for engagement with our members but also allowed for some reunions as many had not seen each other face to face since lockdown. We will now continue towards preparing the start of the WP Club Rugby league season to start in April.
Most of our clubs have planned and are busy preparing for their friendly fixtures. It certainly seems clubs are raring to go as we see quite a few club’s calls to action on various social media platforms. It’s been very inspiring to see how many clubs have made digital posters indicating their friendly fixtures on social media.
Whilst many clubs are opening their doors, preparing facilities, and rolling out plans our university sides are preparing hard for the FNB Varsity Cup and Shield set to start on 14 February 2022 and 4 March 2022 respectively.
On the education side, we are looking forward to an exciting year of rugby education designed at building on our current coaching structures and introducing coaching to new members. As always, our coaching courses are supported via World Rugby and are designed to give you a qualification you can use on a global level.
Our next course now being the World Rugby level one Strength and Conditioning Course this Friday. Candidates are reminded to complete the online World Rugby passport in advance. 
For this and all other courses please click here to register now.
We strongly recommend members consider the Strength and Conditioning course and request that you share the information with your coaching staff and others who might be keen on learning more about rugby Strength and Conditioning. With the growth of management structures and the general need for fitness session at clubs this course puts all candidates in good stead to keep not only their players fit and in good condition, but also their club members, if they choose. Please click here to sign up now.
In the same breath, we’re excited about our WP Rugby 2.5 course which is designed to bridge the gap between world rugby levels one and two and will be targeted at our current coaches and our Women’s High-Performance Coaching program.
We anticipate many exciting new projects on the cards for this year with one of our major focal points being the resumption of the various portfolio representatives at our clubs. Initial plans indicate two of these being our Women’s representatives and MMS ( Media, Marketing and Sponsorship ) members at the clubs.
Building on the success of the growth of Women’s rugby we will continue to seek to grow women’s rugby at clubs. A large part of this will be the interaction between the club MMS members and the Women’s reps.
By using the skills our club MMS members have now learned we anticipate that our Women’s representatives can lean on the MMS squads for extra support to grow their databases.
One practical method we will be deploying to support our members will be using digital forms dedicated to each club. This format of digital data collection will see each club able to send messages to their members to help grow their database. We look forward to introducing this to our members shortly.
We will shortly meet with our club members again to discuss the season ahead and clubs are reminded to please send their list of friendlies to the WPRFU offices and that all friendly fixtures require approval from the WPRFU.
On the DHL WP Rugby front our DHL Stormers and DHL WP Rugby Currie Cup sides remain in action and have already started drawing the crowds to the DHL Stadium. This is very exciting for us as we now again see our DHL Faithfull able to see their favourite players up close and personal.