Leaving a lasting legacy for the host nation is an important element of any International Rugby Board tournament with players visiting local schools and rugby clubs, hosting skill clinics and talking to the children about what makes rugby such a special part of their lives.
For the first time, though, at Women's Rugby World Cup 2010 the decision was taken to hold a Rugby Ready course which would offer the players themselves a legacy for their own future when the time comes to hang up their boots, be it as coach or referee.
The session was voluntary and took place the day after round two, but virtually the whole of the South African squad and several Swedish players took part in the three-hour course, which involved both classroom and practical activities.
"The idea behind doing Rugby Ready here was to try a different type of legacy event, one which provided a potential legacy for the players themselves and made them consider the game more holistically and maybe even consider exit routes from playing into coaching or refereeing," explained IRB Training and Medical Manager Mark Harrington.
"The players underwent a tailored Rugby Ready course which is aimed at raising awareness and promoting best practise in the areas of injury prevention, safe technique and injury management.
"The course was intentionally very practical and triggered
their awareness of coaching in a progressive but game centred
manner whilst also experiencing refereeing some elements of the
game."
Coaching and refereeing
The 40-odd players were split into three groups with Harrington, the tournament's Referee Manager Bernd Gabbei, Wales coach Jason Lewis, his South African counterpart Denver Wannies, referees Kerstin Ljungdahl and David Keane and IRB Women's Development Manager Susan Carty leading them as IRB Licensed Educators.
The first part of the course took place a classroom at Surrey Sports Park with Harrington explaining the format of the course and asking players what it was they enjoyed about rugby, with responses that it teaches values, is a team not individual sport and makes people happy the responses.
The Swedish and South African players were then split into smaller sub groups and given topics to discuss such as long-term player development and injury prevention and management, before talking about their ideas with the whole group to promote discussion of the important topics.
Initial nerves about talking in front of their fellow players and course leaders soon evaporated when it became time to head to the gym for the practical sessions, taking place indoors due to the heavy rain, being replaced by laughter as they put together their own warm up routines and looked at drills to practice scrum formation, binding, lineout jumping, tackling and these from a referee's perspective.
It wasn't only the technical aspects of the game that were
covered by the course leaders, though, with a clear message being
the need to keep training sessions fun and varied to keep players
interested, and the different games available that realise both but
also have a relevance to skill and player development.
Being 'Rugby Ready'
"After some initial trepidation the players engaged in the workshop really well and were happy to try their hand at coaching, refereeing and some classroom type activities," added Harrington. "It also allowed them to experience some areas of the game that they were not fully familiar with and consider their long-term engagement in the sport.
"I hope they will take away from the sessions a sense of enjoyment, a wider understanding of being "Rugby Ready" and some potential outlets for staying involved in the game."
The initial feedback from the players involved is that the workshop was a positive experience and something that had got them thinking about the Women's Game back in their respective countries and how they could stay involved in a sport that has brought them much joy over the years.
"It was very interesting, you look at the game in a different perspective," explained South Africa full back Aimee Barrett, who has previously coached at an under nine level and refereed touch and hockey back home.
"Sometimes as players we get caught up with the ball, the
game, who is up next and matching up your opponent, but I'm
seeing it from the coaching side and the technical aspects. You
bring it down to the basics and you just see it in a different way.
Eye-opening
"It kind of opened my eyes up a bit.
"I liked the practical parts, that's just the way I
work. I learnt a lot about forward play, I play full back and you
just see the forwards doing their job and you don't really
appreciate how hard they work and how technical it actually is.
It's not just jumping around and hitting each other in the
scrums!
"I learnt a bit about that and then we broke down some
of the Laws. As a player sometimes you can have a go at a referee
and you actually don't realise how many different things
you've got to check before you've got to make a call, and
how many different views there are to the same situation."
This was a sentiment echoed by Swedish prop Erica
Storckenfeldt, who during the group sessions had explained the
differences in her country when it comes to player recruitment in
that it doesn't happen at five to seven years old like in other
nations, but often in mid to late twenties.
"I thought it was really interesting. I'd never
heard of Rugby Ready before and I thought it did sound like a very
good idea to give some sort of introduction to what you can do
apart from just playing," admitted Storckenfeldt.
"You get some interesting thoughts about your role in
rugby, some interesting points in how to coach or more how to think
about coaching and not just go there and go 'we're going to
do it like this', actually to do it better.
Huge opportunity
"It was also interesting to take the role of the ref,
I've never done that before. Just refereeing a tackle opened
the eyes as to how hard it must be and I hope I'm never going
to complain about referees again because that was really hard.
"I'm going to read more about coaching and try to
find more ways to warm up. One thing I really liked was that he was
talking about how to bring games into the warm up and not just do
two laps around the pitch and then start stretching. How to make it
more game related and more fun.
"I've thought about coaching previously so I thought
this was a really good opportunity to get some sort of insight into
what's required to be a coach and what you need to think about
as a coach. I thought it was a really useful start and I hope to
look into it more."
The fact that Women's Rugby World Cup 2010 was the first
time the a Rugby Ready course has been run at a tournament was not
lost on Barrett, who is studying sports science at Stellenbosch
University back home in South Africa.
"I just think it's really good to see that they are
focusing on getting more women playing rugby, and it's not just
the playing aspect, it's coaching and refereeing and things
like that.
"We've been given an opportunity to get more players
in and I think that's what we need in the Women's Game.
It's not that we have a lower standard compared to the men, we
just need more people to play and get involved, not even on the
playing field but on the coaching or administration.
"There are so many opportunities and it would be great
to see the Women's Game going forward."
Rugby Ready is available on four platforms - print, online
atwww.irbrugbyready.com, as a DVD and face to face course. The handbook is available
in 11 languages (English, France, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese,
Russian, German, Romanian, Italian, Portuguese and
Arabic).
