Plans to nurture Big County rugby talent

Oct 29 2010 by Gordon Bannerman, Perthshire Advertiser Friday

PERTHSHIRE Rugby Club believe it’s time to kick on and look to the future.

REACT 2 Rugby has now evolved to the “TRY Rugby” programme, providing nine weeks of structured rugby to each primary school child from P4 to P7 who are feeding into the main four secondary schools in Perth.

The kids will receive four weeks of curricular, one week of festival and four weeks of Rugby Development Team supported after-school club activity.

Development supremo Derek O’Riordan said: “It is our aim the after-school activity can continue through the recruitment of volunteers and teachers.”

As a natural pathway from primary school and mini rugby, the Perthshire Rugby Development Team decided to launch and support a Perth and Kinross county wide inter schools league.

This is providing competitive rugby, in school for S1 to S4 pupils with each pupil who takes part participating in around seven fixtures per year.

“Further to that we are also providing a county wide schools 7's tournament for S1, S2, U16 and Senior levels, again hoping to create a larger pool of players and volunteers throughout Perthshire. One of our largest targets this year is to bring rugby to non traditional rugby schools so to coincide with the launch of the Sports Comprehensive – a combined venture between Perth Grammar and St Johns RC.

“We helped launch a ‘Sports Comprehensive’ rugby team at S1/2 level. This has shown huge success with all signs pointing to rugby becoming an established sport at the school.”

To help aid and strengthen the ranks of the 1st XV in the near and distant future The Rugby Development Team are taking steps to establish a sustainable performance pathway from S1 to Senior rugby.

Step one of this was to re-launch an academy to suit the needs of the club. The latest incarnation will see the academy players receive a balanced mix of Strength and Conditioning, Speed Development, Wrestling and Groundwork, Contact Management, Game Management and of course Skill Development.