Developing Women’S Rugby

Over 100 women’s players turned out at four development days run across the central belt aimed at up-skilling club rugby players not involved in the national set-up.The National Development League (NDL) is structured to meet the needs of new and developing women’s clubs by combining competition and skills development for all senior players, delivered by NDL coaches, followed by league games.The skills development sessions focused on in-game technique and game understanding followed by a host of friendly matches to put the new skills to the test with the view to reducing the gap between the elite and club game with the results from the fixtures collated and used to produce the NDL table. Over 100 women’s players turned out at four development days run across the central belt aimed at up-skilling club rugby players not involved in the national set-up. The National Development League (NDL) is structured to meet the needs of new and developing women’s clubs by combining competition and skills development for all senior players, delivered by NDL coaches, followed by league games.The skills development sessions focused on in-game technique and game understanding followed by a host of matches to put the new skills to the test with the view to reducing the gap between the elite and club game with the results from the fixtures collated and used to produce the NDL table.Fife Southern and Cartha Queens Park were the September event’s generous hosts for the first two sessions and, with the help of professional players Max Evans, Callum Forrester, Fraser McKenzie and David Young, the participants were treated to specific coaching updates according to the their position: front and second-row scrum formation, back-row scrum formation and attacking lines, scrum-half and stand-off passing. The midfield and outside backs were coached on the specifics of attacking lines while all sessions covered Scottish Rugby National Coaching Themes of tackling and ball presentation.Similar sessions were run in October, this time hosted by Broughton RFC and Stirling County. To freshen things up the emphasis at Broughton was shifted to take the forwards through the intricacies of the lineout while the Glasgow Warriors’ stand-off Ruaridh Jackson helped drill the backs in kicking and the kick-receive / counter-attack.The NDL programme is very flexible, and aims to give players the chance to develop their rugby skills in a controlled competitive environment.Any player (except Scotland Women or Scotland Women A) can attend, so Premier and National League clubs can send along their new players to gain some valuable game time experience before dropping into full league rugby.Traditionally, university teams have used the NDL to develop their freshers at the start of the season.Want to give the NDL a try? Key calendar dates are Sunday 15 November 2009, Sunday 6 December 2009, Sunday 17 January 2009, Sunday 14 February 2010, 25 April 2010