The following article details each aspect of the operation of a club from the completion of the clubs Annual General Meeting (AGM) until the next AGM at the end of the season.

You may also wish to review the Committee's Annual Checklist of all duties required by the club in the course of a full year of rugby, along with a breakdown of these duties in a monthly timeline. This enables the committee to plan what needs to be done and also confirm what should have been done.

One of the first things a club needs to do to start the new rugby year is get their coaches and managers in place.

Ideally each team would have a backs coach, forwards coach and a manager. To oversee, assist and provide additional training for these roles, the club should also appoint a very experienced and qualified club coach. Not only to assist the grade/colts/juniors coaches with training, but also with selections. The Club Coach should give all players in the club an opportunity to play at the highest level.

If a club is having difficulties recruiting for these roles, you may look at reducing the workload for coaching. An example of this is to have your Tuesday session as skills and fitness only which can be run by performance fitness/skills trainers and not coaches. This would mean that coaches and managers are not required to attend Tuesday training at all. This would cut down a 3rd the amount of time a coach needs to commit to the club. Alternatively you could have player led training sessions.

Another option is that the club only requires both coaches to attend the Thursday training. On the weekend, only one coach is required to attend the games. This allows the club to recruit coaches who can only commit to a Thursday. There are plenty of people around who have no issue with a couple of hours on a Thursday, but cannot commit to every and/or any weekend (i.e., have their own kids sport).

A great way to show off the organisation at your club is to have club members wearing a club kit. Working with a sponsor can be a great way to provide club kit at very little to no cost to the player or club. Additional kit can be an incentive to ensure players' subs are paid.

The club should also have spare socks and shorts at every game (home and away) for players who have damaged, forgotten or lost socks or shorts on game day.

Kit which may be supplied to the players may be as follows:

Yearly Kit – Given each year

• Socks – Playing socks
• Playing shorts – Logo and sponsors
• Training shirt – With all sponsor logos
• Training shorts – Logo and sponsor

Additional Kit - Once off optional kit a club may look at

• Beanie – Logo and sponsor
• Hat/Cap – Logo and sponsornbsp;
• Hoodie – Logo and sponsor
• Polo Shirt – Logo and sponsor
• Dress shirt – Logo and sponsor
• Rain jacket – Logo and sponsor
• Tracksuit – Logo and sponsor
• Gear bag – Logo and sponsor

With pre-season coming up, a club needs to have a stock take of all equipment required for the season. Any damaged gear needs to be repaired or replaced.

The cost of purchasing much of the equipment used by a club (e.g., hit shields, tackle bags, training/game balls) may be offset by selling to sponsors “the space” and placing their logo on the equipment.

Equipment required by a club during the season can include the following:

Training

• Scrum machine
• Training balls
• Agility poles
• Fitness cones
• Hit shields
• Tackle bags
• Whistles
• Coaches equipment bags
• Water bottles
• Ice
• First aid Kit

On-Field Game Day

• Corner posts
• Line Marking
• Jerseys
• Goal post protectors
• Water Bottles
• Marquees
• Warm-up balls
• Match balls
• Reserve jackets
• Kicking tees
• Hit shields
• Crowd ropes

A well organised and run pre-season will set up a club for the year ahead. Players should look forward to a pre-season and getting back involved with the club. A few things to consider when organising your club’s pre-season are:

Training

• Start on time (this cannot be emphasised enough). If your training session is due to start at 7pm. Start at 7pm, regardless of how many people are there.
• Make it fun. There are many ways that you can push fitness onto players so they enjoy it. Mix the training up and try to include as much ball in hand fitness activities.
• Make it competitive. Choosing fitness activities which results in competition between players/groups makes the training session more productive than just “running laps”
• Be organised. Coaches/trainers need to have a well organised plan of what the training will be for the entire session. They also need to have the ground setup for the entire session so that players are not standing around between exercises.
• Be well equipped.
• Explain. Make sure all exercises are clearly identified to the players. Consider using a few players to demonstrate each exercise before performing as a group. Don’t assume everyone knows how to complete each exercise.
• Alternatives. Have a well-organised back up plan if training is disrupted by factors such as weather. These can include a gym session, boxing session, road run etc.
• Communicate. Make sure that ALL players are regularly contacted in regards to training times, locations , alternatives etc. Do not assume that they all read one form of communication (e.g., emails) make sure you broadcast communication on multiple medias (e.g., website, email, Facebook, WhatsApp, text). Different generations use different mediums so you need to cater for everyone

Trial Games/competitions

• Pick a club to trial against with similar numbers and player ability.
• Try to get the games played at your home ground. This gives an opportunity for your club to showcase the home day experience to the new players.
• Be organised. Treat trial games like regular season games. Again, the club is looking to impress and keep the new players in the club. Having an unorganised preseason game does not look good to new recruits, especially if the opposition’s teams are highly organised and equipped.

All of the preparation and organisation has now paid off and your club is about to start the regular season. Find below a few suggestions about administering your club during the regular season.

Training

• Training switches from fitness based to teams based as selections are made and the club is broken up into teams for competition games.
• Start on time (this cannot be emphasised enough). If your training session is due to start at 7pm. Start at 7pm, regardless of how many people are there.
• Ensure teams for the weekend are finalised as quickly as possible and weekend team lists are published.
• Very important that coaches personally contact any player who has been moved up or down from the week before. Communicate with the player why they have been moved. If they have been moved down, outline the reasons for the call. Advise them on what they need to work on in order to get back into the team.
• If the club is doing opposed work, consider getting teams in same/close age groups or some of the colts teams to run opposed with some of the grade teams. It is important to get the colts players and the grade players to interact so that the transition from colts to grade is a lot easier for individual players.

Game Day

• Home games. This is the chance to showcase your club, not only to new players in the club, but also to the opposition club. Having a well-organised, well-run well-equipped home game day experience reflects the culture of the club and the administrators (board/committee) who run it. It is also important to communicate with the opposing club everything about your home game day. The game day experience for the opposing club starts with the invitation.
• Away games. Playing away is not a holiday from organisation and preparation. Again, how organised a club is on away games reflects on the organisation of the administrators.

Coaches

Similar to the committee/board of a club, the coaches also need to be well organised when it comes to game day. The players should only have to turn up, play, support and back-up, the club should take care of the rest.