Gavin, can you give us an overview of what the Player Pathway in Ulster is, please?
The Player Pathway is a development system that connects the clubs, schools, and programmes delivered by Ulster Rugby. It starts with entry at regional level at U16, right through to provincial programmes at U18 and U19, and finishes with the Ulster Rugby Academy and those players transitioning into Senior rugby.
The overall purpose of the Pathway is to identify, develop, and support the players with the highest potential to hopefully go on and play for Ulster and Ireland. But it is also focussed on an awareness around creating a really positive experience for all players, and trying to build and grow the community game at club level as well.
The Pathway has successfully been in place for a number of years now, with the province reaping the benefits across the Men’s and Women’s game. Can you tell us about the recent developments?
There have been two really exciting developments over the last 12-18 months. One is around the additional staff resource in the Men's and Women's game, and that has created the opportunity for us to better support our younger players at U16 level across our regional squads - both from a Rugby perspective and an Athletic Development perspective.
Hopefully it’s going to create solid foundations in the next three to four years, as we see those players transition through the Pathway and be in a strong position to progress toward becoming Senior Ulster players. The second point is around our NTS programme - both within the Men's and Women's game, and that's trying to target those players with the highest potential, and create opportunities where we can have maximum contact points with those players. This involves supporting them not only from a Rugby and Athletic Development point of view, but also build sports psychology, medical support, nutritional support as well.
As Head of the Ulster Rugby Academy, can you tell us specifically what role the Academy has to play in the Pathway?
The Academy is about supporting those players with the highest potential that have been identified through the Pathway, or as late entrants. Currently we have twelve players and they are offered a very individualised and bespoke level of support, which ranges from technical, tactical, physical, mental, to nutritional.
The role of the Academy is to support these players in making the transition into the Senior professional game so it's very closely aligned to what the Senior programme looks like from a training perspective, but we are also trying to create playing opportunities in how we connect with our clubs in the All Ireland League, and support those players nationally at U19 and U20 level.
What changes and benefits will we see from the new season onwards in terms of the Academy and A-team?
One of our initiatives for next year is to look at how we best support the players within the Academy. For new entrants, it's about the individual support as they transition from the Club and School game. For our Year 2 and 3 Academy players, it's how we closely align them with the Senior programme to enable them to bridge that gap to the professional game. It's important we look at appropriate fixtures around the Development and ‘A’ Team level to bridge that gap between the All Ireland League and United Rugby Championship level.
Are you looking forward to working with Queens University Belfast on the new partnership?
It's a really exciting partnership for us. One of the strong markers in talent research tells us about pooling talented players together in one environment. The partnership with Queen's allows us to group the Academy and out-of-school NTS players, who have chosen Queen’s as their place of study, and keep them together for training and playing opportunities. Having the Head Coach, Derek Suffern, really closely connected with our programme as well enables us to share ideas from an Ulster perspective, and it hopefully enables those players to perform at a much higher level and gives them the best opportunity to progress through the Pathway.
How will the wider club game feed into the Pathway, and can you tell us about the investment into the club game as a result of developments in the Pathway programme?
We have two initiatives we kicked off this year to better support the Club game. The first was around our AIL releases with regards to our Senior and Academy-contracted players, and that's had a really positive impact in providing those players with regular opportunities to support their development. Our second has been around the Club Support Scheme, which has been closely linked with our Rugby Development team and the work undertaken by Budge Pountney with regards to coach development. We're able to bring together the AIL coaches at regular points of the season.
Read more about the Ulster Rugby Player Pathway here.