Boroughmuir Rugby Development Update

Boroughmuir RFC Development Update April 2011Ross Young – Boroughmuir Development OfficerApril is usually one of the quieter months in terms of delivery for Rugby Development with all the school holidays. However we did manage to keep ourselves busy tying up the odd bits of primary and secondary school delivery we had going on whilst promoting the Scottish Rugby Easter Camps (which Stuart worked on) as well as the Club Sevens and Mini Tournament.Over the past year or so the performance programme within Scottish Rugby has been under review and the Easter holidays just past saw the official roll out of the new Key National Theme Skills Camp. This is where players at Under 14 and Under 15 who meet the specified criteria are nominated by their coaches from both clubs and schools to attend a two day camp. At the camp held on Roseburn Park the players were put through National assessments on their ability to carry out the key points of the four Key National Themes which are – Handcatch, Offload, Ball Presentation and Individual Tackle Technique. The players were assessed in both practice drills and game situations and each will receive feedback on their performance in the next month or so. After this it was time for us assessors to down our clip boards and slip back into our more familiar role as coaches where we could properly work with the players to try and develop them further. Over the four days we saw well in excess of 150 players across the two age groups with a strong Boroughmuir presence of over 20 players and club S2 coach Peter Wood joining the coaching team for the U15 assessment / development sessions.Myself and Ross Peacock had another opportunity to put our coach educator skills to the test by running the final Rugby Ready course in the city for the year. This is the course that was introduced by Scottish Rugby at the beginning of the season as the new minimum standards qualification for all coaches, referees and teachers involved in rugby. The course content is mainly based around the safety concerns in the game at present and covers all variations from Mini rugby all the way through to adult senior rugby. As expected the course was well attended with over 20 participants turning out, we were able to get through the indoor theory part of the course fairly quickly and get outside onto the pitch where we saw some excellent examples of good positive coaching through contact warm ups, tackle, scrum and lineout.Finally May & June will see rugby development focus its attention on the final stages of the State Schools Sevens Series, tracking our Under 16 players (many of whom will be touring Canada with Boroughmuir High School in early June) into Under 18 rugby as well as Under 18’s into senior club rugby and last but certainly not least ensuring our Secondary Schools incoming batch of 1st years get a taste of rugby at their P7 into S1 transition events.