More Rugby Opportunities For Regional Players
Six women will be selected for a placement scholarship to play in a Super W team next year.
Sunday 11 September 2022 | 10:30
From left: Manuma Samoa head coach Ofa Hanipale, Oceania Rugby International partnership officer Koli Sewabu and Kevin Senio at the Pacific Theological College on September 7, 2022. Photo: Koli Sewabu
Six women will be selected for a placement scholarship to play in a Super W team next year.
This is part of the women’s rugby combine programme delivered by Oceania Rugby.
Oceania Rugby in partnership with Rugby Australia and World Rugby will facilitate a Women’s Combine Programme with 20 women rugby players from Samoa, Tonga, Papua New Guinea and a number of staff from the Pacific on September 18-26, where the six athletes would be selected from. It will be held on the Gold Coast, Australia.
A world-first for women’s rugby, the one-week high performance training and development camp would involve some of the best coaches and professionals of World Rugby.
The 20 players were selected during the Oceania Rugby Women’s Championship which was held in July in Auckland, New Zealand.
Oceania Rugby International Partnership Officer Koli Sewabu said this is a major boost for Pacific islands nations’ women’s rugby pathways.
“The objective is to our emerging Pacific Island athletes provide exposure into through specialised coaching, testing, education and elite pathway high performance environment.
“It will accelerate player development, women player pathways and strengthen the competitiveness of national teams for Tonga, Samoa and PNG,” he said.
“The Super W coaches will also attend the combine programme as part of their selection process.
“The programme holistically assesses and evaluates athletes on 5 pillars, based around their technical (fundamental and position-specific skills), and tactical (positional, game understanding and awareness), physical (anthropometry, speed, power and endurance), medical (musculoskeletal screening) and psychosocial (psychological and social influences and impacts).
“The benefits of this are extensive, multifaceted and would include providing women with empowerment, leadership and development opportunities and contribution to other key areas, including social cohesion, gender equality, empowerment of girls and young women, and economic well-being.”
The 20 includes three island-based players from PNG, nine Tongans and eight Samoans.
The Oceania Rugby women’s combine programme follows the successful World Rugby men’s Pacific combine which was launched in 2018.
The other projects in place are for professional developments specifically targeting Samoa, Tonga, PNG and Solomon Islands to enhance and establish their high performance programmes.
It will include having Australian experts in the Pacific to work with the Pacific nations unions.
“We are trying to build and identify what are the areas of need from the islands in the high performance area,” Sewabu said.
“It could be coaching, match officiating, strength and conditioning or performance analysis. We will bring them over to Australia and have them immersed into the Australian high performance programmes so they can take that learning back and implement them to enhance on-island programs.
“It’s about establishing pathways and having a good development plan in place to assist in structures and pathways.”
The former Fiji Rugby Union national development manager said similar programmes have been done in Fiji during his term at Rugby House.
“These were some of the initiatives that was implemented in Fiji over the last few years; have a good development plan in place and alignment shared across stakeholders – from junior rugby club set ups to schools, clubs and provinces whilst you build capacity within.
“Some of our island have yet to establish them and we are trying to assist them to put similar systems in place.”
PacificAus Sports works to create greater engagement between Australia and the Pacific through our shared love of sport by developing pathways for Pacific teams and athletes to play in high-level Australian sporting competitions; for Australian sporting codes to increase their presence in the Pacific; and for emerging athletes to benefit from Australian training and competitions.
Meanwhile, Sewabu was in the country attending the Pacific Mens Combine. He said that there were lots of learnings taken from this camp to be implemented with the womens camp in a few weeks.
The camp was also attended by coaches and management of the Fijian Drua and Moana Pasifika.
Feedback: sereana.salalo@fijisun.com.fj
