Youth Summit 2019

A variety of speakers spoke passionately about the event providing club, school coaches and volunteers from the youth game the opportunity to learn and better shape their youth rugby environment.

After some light refreshments and healthy discussions between attendees, the day kicked off with an engaging presentation from Richard Cheetham who has an international reputation in coach education and development. Richard spoke about the importance of understanding learning and the links to improved coaching and, ultimately, improving players.

Following Richard, there were four break-out sessions where Stuart Edwards presented on developing a youth rugby environment, Roddy Deans spoke about Scotland U18 defence, while Peter Jericevich presented on his approach to attack with Scotland U16 Blues, and Alan Falconer spoke about transitioning youth players into adult rugby.

Following a short break, the second key note speaker, Paul Kilgannon, gave a presentation which was based around his book ‘Coaching Children in Sport – The Carver Framework’.

The afternoon session provided short updates from Coach Development Officer James Wade on the age grade law variations before Ciaran Beattie presented on the impact of the Technical Blueprint.

All presentations on the day were built towards an outstanding finale from the third key-note speaker Ben Ryan, who coached the Fiji Sevens team to Olympic Gold in 2016. Ben’s inspiring story left a real buzz in the room and was a great finish to a fantastic youth rugby summit.