South West Rugby Update

[BaldCunus]

Hi Guys,
Great to see you supporting Country Rugby in WA. I am actually the Development Officer in the Southwest covering Bunbury, Margs, Dunsborough and Collie Regions. Would Just like to update the progress we have made down here in the year I have been working to promote rugby down here..

We are hitting primary schools pretty hard with over 25 schools in the district been introduced to rugby in the form of clinics. We have also held a couple of Gala Days with around 350 kids playing Walla Rugby on the days. High Schools are coming along nicely with the results of some heavy promoting over the last 10 weeks being 6 high schools participating in rugby in the annual winter carnival with year 8 and year 9/10 divisions. this is a great result and will become an annual event.

A 8 week junior competition was held at the start of the year in Bunbury following a 6 week try rugby program with over 65 kids participating in U8's, U13's U 14's and U17's. The highlights of this comp was sending two U8's teams to play at Half time at the Wallabies V Ireland Test Match and a Gala Day Vs Mandurah Pirates Juniors with our U14's coming away victorious...
For the near future the 23rd of September will see SOuthwest U13's and U14's play Perth-Bayswater Juniors and a Bunbury/Harvey/Collie U17's side play a Dunsbourough/Margs/Busselton Side. Games will kick of at 130pm at Leschenault Leisure Centre for those wanting to have a look at some Southwest Junior Rugby... We are also in the process of organising a trip to Denmark in the great southern for October with a SW Combined U17's to play Neddies, Associates and Great Southern U17's.

I am really pushing rugby in the SW and there has been great levels of interest from school and kids alike and hopefully next year will see further steps taken to create a SW colts side and a sustainable Junior Competition.

Seniors was a development year in the SOuthwest with Narrogin moving to the Great Southern Comp and New SW side Collie and Bunbury developing a SW side creating a 4 team comp down here... Further plans are afoot to make this comp and even better and permanent fixture in the SW...

For any details on rugby in the Southwest drop me a line on 0407233864 or at callan.hatchman@rugbywa.com.au

Look forward to Updating the forum further as rugby progresses in the Southwest..

Yours In Rugby
Callan

[The InnFORCEr]

Great work Callan and all the very best to you and yours with future projects. Anything we can do here to help, just let us know. We can probably set up a sperate forum for all your young fellas to keep in contact between matches as I would assume they all probaly live a fair way form each other. A mesage to Coach should have you all sorted.

[frontrow]

Good to have you on board mate, spread the word on this site and watch it grow through the south west....

[Burgs]

Fantastic to hear the progress you and the other Development Officers are making in Country WA Callan, keep up the great work!
They are some impressive participation figures you quote.
Even if this early exposure only brings more knowledgable supporters to the code it will be a win however, I am sure that it will mean much more and will see a vibrant and successful Country Club comp develop in the future.
Do you think that a scheme of Perth Premier Clubs "adopting" a Country Club as discussed here http://thewholeforce.com/showthread.php?t=383 would have any merit?
Look forward to any Country Rugby updates from anyone in the know.

[travelling_gerry]

Thanks Callan......great work you are doing down there

(get this man some TWF cards....quick....lol)

[Darren]

Long time member, first time poster - good to hear something from you Callan, thanks for the update and feel free to post as much as you want on what you're up to and what's happening down there

[BaldCunus]

Fantastic to hear the progress you and the other Development Officers are making in Country WA Callan, keep up the great work!
They are some impressive participation figures you quote.
Even if this early exposure only brings more knowledgable supporters to the code it will be a win however, I am sure that it will mean much more and will see a vibrant and successful Country Club comp develop in the future.
Do you think that a scheme of Perth Premier Clubs "adopting" a Country Club as discussed here http://thewholeforce.com/showthread.php?t=383 would have any merit?
Look forward to any Country Rugby updates from anyone in the know.

I think this would be a great concept Burgs!!! Even if not so much for financial gain for the clubs down here but more for just games and sharing of coaching knowledge.. This would work great if for example Dunsborough were aligned with ARKS and it could involve a preseason game and a post season game and maybe some combined training sessions were coaches could share ideas and knowledge aswell as club boards etc could also share ideas. With the expansion of juniors down here aswell this would work well with games for our juniors were gala days could be arranged with juniors and seniors playing with an away and home fixture for both teams... I think with the small number of teams in the southwest and most of the country region the more experience and game time available to the teams the more promotion can be achieved and the greater rewards for players down here to keep them interested....

[frontrow]

That is a great concept idea, and you should see some of the premier clubs, and try to organise something. Back in NSW we used to go on end of year trips and play a team on our trip, which ended in a farce usually as we were usually all still p*ssed or too hungover to play properly, but that was the spirit of the game, no one played for sheep stations.
So a pre season warm up game would offer the chance for a team building road trip, as well as a chance to prepare for the season. It would also offer a branch of friendship between the city clubs and the country...Look into it for sure, can you imagine some of the bus trips back to perth, or vice versa...omg, three or four hours on a bus, full of drunken rugby players, yeh...

[BaldCunus]

Just to update results for SW Rugby teams versus Perth bayswater on the weekend.

Both our U13's and U14's were beaten by the much more experienced Perth Bayswater sides on the weekend. We managed to pull together 20 kids for each of the sides and the games were played in a friendly and greatly appreciated atmosphere. there were some great comments from the perth bayswater crowd with the performance of the U14' particularly impressive with some quality rugby played by the SW team who most had only met each other, let alone played with each other, an hour before the game.. One particular comment stood out with some perth bayswater supporters suggesting our team would definately not look out of place in the U 14's Perth comp...

These two games were followed up by an U17's Bunbury Vs Busselton Game. Bunbury came away victorious on the back of some great forward and support work allowing clean ball for the speedy back line.. Busselton put up a great fight and had several try attempts held up over the line but just lacked that killer instinct of the bunbury pack...

The next step for the Bunbury and Busselton 17's is to join forces (tough work considering the intense atmosphere of saturdays game) and form a South West side to travel to Denmark on the 28th of October for a carnival involving great southern, neddies and sokes Under 17 sides...

Will post further updates as the time comes nearer...

Thanks