There's just three days left to get your application in for the Growth & Participation Fund, and the Club Sustainability Fund.

Growth & Participation

There is £500,000 of funding available to be awarded under the Growth & Participation stream for clubs to invest between £5,000 and £10,000 into a project during the 2023/24 season aligned to one of the sub-categories (Women and Girls’ rugby, Development Environments and State School rugby).

There are many ways in which your club could utilse funding from this income stream, for example:

• Amongst clubs who received funding last season was Kelso Rugby Club, who utilised £5,000 of funding to facilitate workshops and training for coaches, players and volunteers on mental and physical wellbeing, sleep hygiene, nutrition, and strength and conditioning to aid on and off field performance and help establish a more positive environment for everyone to enjoy their rugby experience.

• Ross Sutherland also received a grant of £5,000 to support their women and girls programme, which now sees the club boast a thriving women’s team, girls’ section and school programmes.

• Cambuslang Rugby Club were also awarded £7,500 to support their work in collaboration with Stonelaw High School, offering an expanded School of Rugby programme to engage more than 200 boys and girls in curricular and extra-curricular rugby activity.

If your club is looking to run a project next season to support sustained growth and development of the community game, with a focus on inclusion and diversity, please apply to the Growth & Participation Fund. More information can be found on the Scottish Rugby website - click on the link below.

Club Sustainability Fund

The Club Sustainability Fund is also now open, with three sub-catergories of funding available to apply to offering levels of funding between £10,000, £50,000 and £250,000 to support clubs to upgrade their facilities and improve the quality, capacity and longevity of rugby participation.

• Falkirk Rugby Club were awarded £250,000 from this fund to allow them to renovate their pavilion space which will see the six changing rooms redeveloped into four changing rooms, a gym and a community space which can be utilised by the club for coaching, or local groups for meetings and presentations.

Nominations are now open for this season's Player Development Hubs for U15 Boys, and U16 and U18 Girls.

The Player Development Hubs are a steppingstone for some players to progress onto representative and/or performance pathway programmes.

The programmes provide selected players with an opportunity to develop their skills through sessions delivered by qualified and experienced coaches who will follow a national syllabus aligned to the Scottish Rugby Blueprint.

Alongside the hub training sessions and festivals, coach and parent workshops will be delivered to support the player development process.

Girls U16 and U18
In line with Scottish Rugby's newly launched Women and Girls Strategy this season sees an enhanced player development pathway for both Girls U16 and U18 being introduced.

Nominated players will all be invited to an initial assessment day on Sunday 8 January 2023, with a selected group of players going on to play in the Regional Game Series through January/February. Players not selected for the Regional Game Series will be invited to attend the Player Development Hubs in March/April.

 
Both the Regional Game Series and Player Development Hub programmes provide identified girls with additional training and playing opportunities to complement their club/school activities.

Nominations will close Sunday 11 December 2022 - to nominate players, coaches and teachers should visit SCRUMS and click ‘PDH nomination’.

 
For more information on the nomination process and criteria click on the link below.

Last Saturday (19 November) saw representatives from over 85 rugby clubs across Scotland attend the Scottish Rugby Safeguarding Conference. 

On behalf of the Safeguarding team, we would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who came along to hear from our guests speakers and share best practice. 

You can review information from the day in our article below, and we would encourage clubs to connect with their Child Protection Officers who attended for more information on learnings from the event.

Last week teams competing across Scottish Rugby’s National Schools Cup competition vied it out for a semi-final spot. Click on the link beloew to review the results and see who has made it to the semi-final fixtures.