Regional academy festival heads to Dalziel as U16 bio-banding begins

The regional academy sides head to Dalziel RFC tomorrow to continue the inter-region action, with some interesting changes in place this weekend.

Please note, the Dalziel War Memorial Trust, who own the land, will be operating a no dog policy which will be in effect for the festival.

The full fixtures are as follows:

Edinburgh Cannons U16 v Borders & East Lothian Reds U16 – 12pm kick off
Glasgow & the West Blues U16 v Caledonia Thistles U16 – 12pm kick off

Edinburgh U18 v Borders & East Lothian U18 – 2pm kick off
Glasgow & the West Whites U16 v Caledonia Saltires U16 – 2pm kick off

Edinburgh Knights U16 v Borders & East Lothian Whites U16 – 4pm kick off
Glasgow & the West U18 v Caledonia U18 – 4pm kick off

For the U16 teams, the regions have been split into their two teams based on “modified bio-banding”, which looks at the physical maturation of players.

The early pilot of bio-banding will see the use of physical maturation data to help group players into a less and more physically mature team within their regions, allowing coaches to see their players in a different set of parameters.

Athletic Development Manager Andy Boyd explained: “When you look at talent in rugby, at times selection can focus too much on the present, and this can be heavily influenced by players’ current levels of size, strength and speed, all of which are heavily linked to maturation status. This can be at the deterrent to the later maturing athletes, who at that stage are less physically dominant.

“I hope this is the start of using Bio-banding to help us find those on-time and late developers who aren’t the players physically dominating the sport just now, but potentially have the ability if supported to come through and compete later.

“But it also works the other way, where the early maturers may be dominant for a while, they need to have other skills challenged to continue to excel, so we need to be challenging their footwork, offloading and evasion skills and reading of the game.”