Derek O'Riordan’s rugby development diary

Mar 18 2011 Perthshire Advertiser Friday

IT’S been an enjoyable week for the rugby development team with three days of primary festivals taking part on the North Inch for P6 and 7 pupils in the Perth Grammar and St John’s cluster primary schools.

The festivals have had a strong focus on participation and enjoyment for the sport of rugby and that target was certainly achieved.

The format of the festivals enables boys and girls to play in their own series of fixtures which encouraged more kids to have more contact time with the ball.

The festivals could not have taken part without the help of our team of SVQ community coaches, Active Schools, teachers and club volunteers; so thank you to all those involved in making them a success.

For the club we were officially awarded our PACES certificate last week by Alan Clark, sports development manager with Perth and Kinross Council.

The club accreditation scheme launched by the council in recent years has three levels of accreditation, foundation, community and development.

Perthshire Rugby Club has gone straight in at development level which is testament to the forward thinking and hard work of the club over the years in their development program.

In the inter-school league there has been a win today for Crieff High in the S1-2 league against the Sports Comprehensive.

The positive for the Sports Comprehensive is the large squad of players they get to the fixtures and to training every week considering the logistical issues faced by the team being spread over two schools especially in their first year as a team.

This is thanks to the hard work of Greg Marshall (St John’s), Ross Munro, and Mike Edwards (Perth Grammar).

Also continuing our work in developing rugby in secondary schools in Perth, I have begun an S1 performance squad who take part in extra rugby sessions in curricular time at Perth Academy.

This squad of 20 players will get two hours of curricular rugby per week out of their normal time tables where special attention will be given to developing their physical competencies in Scottish Rugby’s – Key National Themes.

Finally a reminder to any and all coaches at or in Perth that we will be holding a “Key National Themes” coaching update at Perthshire RFC on Sunday and Sunday, March 27 at 9:30am.

Those interested can just turn up on the morning but should you have any questions please contact me on 07545 817529.