Girl’s Player Pathway Looking Promising

As the girls, CB programme draws to a close for another season the senior ladies team takes up the baton.  Following changes to the coaching team in the ladies section Max Melville-Brown has been appointed as Head of Rugby, in addition to his regular coaches specialist ‘guest coaches’ will be supporting Max in delivering a first-class coaching experience for those selected.

As part of the squad selection process an open trial was held on 16th January at Aylesford RFC and despite the awful weather we had over 40 women attend the trial, this is an incredible number and one that has presented Max and his team with a real but a pleasant headache in terms of selection!

A massive thank you to all of those ladies who attended the trials.

As part of the refreshed player pathway for the girls game, the RFU have invited 8 players from the current Kent U18’s squad to attend a trail at the Richmond RFC centre of excellence.  Each Centre of Excellence (CoE) is required to deliver between 8-10 hours of contact time per month with players (this may include coaching, S&C, analysis, off-field delivery). The sessions may be delivered during the week as evening sessions or on a Saturday or indeed a combination of both.

Some CoE’s will adopt a flexible delivery model where some CoE sessions are delivered at a satellite venue. This will be especially relevant to those CoE’s with a larger geographical area.   CoE delivery will be mindful of particularly busy educational months (June for example) and will, therefore, look to run a CoE Summer Camp in July or August. These are an excellent way to have increased and focused contact time with all attending players and will be 3 or 4 days in length.

All CoE’s will have the following people in place to support the delivery of the CoE programme

  • CoE Programme Lead
  • CoE Rugby Coaches
  • Strength and Conditioning Coach
  • CoE Physiotherapist

I’m sure you will agree that this sets the foundations for the new player pathway and we look forward to keeping close tabs on those Kent girls lucky enough to be entered on to it.