This past week has again been another week of constructive planning and delivery for senior and junior rugby with more development specifically for Women’s Rugby.
After last week’s 65-0 win over the Eastern Province u20 side in Dispatch, our DHL WP Rugby u20 side hosted the Bulls u20 side in a typical derby match in the u20 SA Rugby Cup at DHL Newlands this Friday. After a tough eighty minutes, our boys managed to secure a 17-11 win. The team next travels to Johannesburg to face the Lions u20 side on 17 September 2012.
This past Wednesday saw an online gathering of our Women’s Collective as we hosted a constructive sharing and engagement session to plot some of the activities for the next month.
The Women’s Collective which includes current and past players, former women’s team managers, club women’s representatives, and more is fast gaining momentum. The concept took another step forward this week with the addition of regional representatives who will spearhead various campaigns to drive the growth of women and girls’ rugby in various regions.
The collective campaigns include various competitions such as six touch for women and their first social outreach project on World Literacy Day in various communities on 8 September 2021. This campaign driven by the collective will see close to two thousand books handed over to various schools in underprivileged areas.
Heritage Day on 24 September is just around the corner and this will see the rollout of the first of our women and girls’ gatherings as we bring together women and girls teams from various clubs in various regions. 
The core principle of the Women’s Collective remains the growth of Women’s Rugby participants for women and girls with the constant objective to drive recruitment at club level. To achieve this we have requested that all clubs appoint a women’s rugby representative at their respective clubs. Each of these representatives will look to signup women and girl members from their local schools and neighbourhoods using various membership capture and communications tools.
These members can then be afforded the opportunity to participate in activities exclusive to women and girls. This could happen without the focus on matches and the objective being to build the membership to eventually convert into fixture playing teams.
Thursday saw us engage with a number of our clubs who have taken up the opportunity to have friendly fixtures. These matches will be organized between the clubs directly and will see yet another stream of excitement in club rugby as we anticipate the clubs arranging typical derby style matches amongst each other.
As we know many other sport codes are currently playing fixtures and hosting championships and although allowed by government and SA Rugby we are retaining a firm hand on our club rugby club activities. Our engagements continue to ensure that clubs are aware that all fixtures must comply with the relevant health and safety protocols and can only go ahead if sanctioned by WP Rugby.
Next week Friday 10 September 2021 sees us host our next World Rugby Level One Fifteens Course at DHL Newlands. This course is now fully booked with the following course scheduled to take place on 1 October 2021.
For those interested in coaching sevens rugby now is a great opportunity to get started as we host our next World Rugby Sevens course on 22 October 2021.
Considering the constant excitement for Sevens rugby and the fact that club sport is re-inventing itself in terms of activity and participation numbers we expect this course to be sold out soon. To sign up for any of these and other courses please click here to sign up now.
As we see many clubs reaching out to their members to do weekly health and fitness at their clubs using the luxury of open space and fresh air we suggest that our members take advantage of our next Strength and Conditioning course. Clubs will find that this course is particularly useful for those that are managing on-field fitness sessions for their members.
The next World Rugby Level one Strength and Conditioning course is on 19 November 2021, but if we see an increase in demand, we will host an additional course sooner. If you simply want to be on the mailing list for notifications and to show your interest, please click here to add your name to the list. We will then notify you directly of any upcoming courses and course schedule changes.