Grassroots Participation

Unless you’re coming across as an established NRL star with lots of zero’s on the end of your pay cheque (which is a practice rugby should avoid btw), grassroots participation represents the entry point for most of us in the game. It’s where we learn rugby and where many of us grow to love it. 

If it’s working well and drawing in big numbers, it will provide an ample supply of talent for those layers of the ecosystem that are positioned above it. This is a numbers game and alignment with those layers above isn’t as much the focus as is driving participation to add depth to the player pool.

The unpack of this important part of the ecosystem will move on from suggestions for teams, competitions and structures and adopt a narrative of strategies that aim to expose, engage and hook young participants.

While we’re a long way from the top of the ‘blade of grass’, the relationship between these two contrasting layers of the ecosystem is vitally important and a noteworthy starting point for a participation strategy. Professional and international rugby is what takes the game to the masses and plays an enormous part in capturing interest, inspiring kids and becoming the diet that feeds big dreams. Getting these ‘products’ right is our most powerful tool for driving participation.

Back down at grassroots level, strategically deploying resources and investing in structures that make the game accessible and easy to engage in is also vitally important. What this looks like is a topic of conjecture though.

There seems to be a feeling out there that a development officer on every street corner and pumping the game into schools (eg. rugby’s Auskick) is the answer here. My work in the education sector exposes me to a wide range of schools and their extracurricular endeavours and through my experience I’ve come to believe this is much easier said than done.

I’ve been involved in very well-resourced concepts that effectively remove every barrier you could just about imagine for participation and still challenges persist to achieve school buy-in. You can lead the horse to rugby’s ‘water trough’ but unfortunately it isn’t very palatable at the moment. 

That’s not to say we throw our hands up and walk away from this challenge. There’s one commonality for every kid under the age of fifteen that binds the junior market segment together into one package to target- they all go to school. So, it’s important to fish where the fish are and schools have to play a significant part of the participation strategy.

The strength in rugby’s existing relationship with schools is the game leaning on the private system as a pathway. Although the relationship with those ‘traditional rugby schools’ is often criticised, they have facilities and resources that effectively match professional sporting organisations and there’s really no better place to nurture rugby talent (arguably of either code) than within the fence line of one of these institutions. 

While fostering the schools ecosystem in this way provides the game with a great asset for producing talent for first grade honours in club competitions and beyond, it doesn’t tap into the real strength of a healthy approach to schools. It doesn’t offer a production line that tackles the important work of filling stadiums and converting Stan Sport subscriptions and rugby needs to seriously broaden its approach to schools and start to value them as pathways for fans and participation. 

My suggestion here is to target the in-school decision makers- the teachers. There’s something that the majority of schools that engage in some form of meaningful rugby (beyond a one-off game here and there) has in common. Their involvement is driven by teachers/staff that have a background in rugby or are in some way connected to the game in their lives beyond the school gate. Unfortunately for rugby, those of us in schools that make up part of the rugby family are in a shrinking pool, so the game has to do things that attempt to win over the important gatekeepers of extracurricular programs.

In addition to a visible and engaging product at the top of the pyramid, strategically allocating resources and designing well-crafted structures that encourage and aim to connect people to the game- the people in schools who are usually giving up their own time to provide opportunities for students to play sport, have to want to do that with rugby. Schools will remain a ‘difficult nut to crack’ for rugby without that key stakeholder’s support. 

There’s no ‘silver bullet’ here and what’s required is a wide ranging ‘toolkit’ of strategies that push rugby onto teachers and their students. There’s the ‘low-hanging fruit’ strategies such as player appearances, regional competitions (strategically deploying both forms of the game) and development officers connecting schools to these competitions and other ‘rugby-interested’ schools in their area. Other schools strategies include:

Accessible upskilling of ‘gatekeepers’ 

A great piece of work is happening in Queensland (possibly other states too) that provides school-based employees with free and accessible coaching qualifications. Solidify this by giving each participating teacher a polo from their local TTR club to throw into their weekly rotation of shirts. Extend this out to other rugby-related professional development opportunities and ensure this is a nation-wide initiative (if it isn’t already).

Tapping into the ‘sports excellence’ trend in state schools 

Sport academies/excellence programs are a fixture in almost every state secondary school in Queensland to allow schools the opportunity to ‘differentiate’ themselves and offer something unique. Rugby has a global reach with strong male and female pathways that should be promoted to schools that are looking to extend or start an academy program. In addition to putting rugby forward as a desirable option, supports should be put in place for the schools with a rugby academy to ensure it remains sustainable. Academy programs do have a habit of coming and going (particularly with staffing movements) so there has to be a concerted effort to ensure that once an academy has been established that it becomes entrenched.

A schools rugby family 

Last but not least is a raft of engagement opportunities that expose teachers and students to the elite platforms of the game to elevate a rugby community in schools, put the pathway in front of them and plant the seeds for big dreams. Get TTR tickets into the hands of students and teachers and spread ARC tickets across rural and regional schools. Give teachers the opportunity to attend with a beer instead of students and provide a platform for them to connect with other teachers to make it a somewhat social experience for them. Those of us that volunteer in club-land do it for the love of the game and becoming embedded in a community of fellow followers is something that the game offers in return to make it easier for us to keep giving our time.

Trying to maintain a rugby presence within a school can be a lonely experience and providing opportunities to connect these people together to exchange ideas and opportunities will be beneficial for maintaining the drive. If rugby can attempt to replicate a hybrid version of the rugby community that exists in club-land on the schools front, it will go a long way towards winning over a really important stakeholder at the grassroots level.

The base goal of a push into non-traditional schools is to expose young students to the game and capture their interest as fans. While converting all of these students into registered rugby players is not attainable, the schools strategy has to support an attempt to drive registrations towards clubs for those students that show an interest in playing the game. This should start with clubs being supported with strategies and resources to connect and establish sustainable partnerships with schools. 

Clubs obviously play a huge part in any overarching participation strategy that extends beyond schools. While they all share the fact that they are primarily filled with volunteers with a deep love of the game, the range of expertise within clubs and the complexities around them is enormous. As the ‘franchisees’, there has to be a central pallet of support that they can tap into to fill gaps across their volunteer base while working alongside them in overcoming challenges and capitalising on opportunities that exist in the local communities they operate within. 

These are the ‘bones’ of strategies that aim to position the participation layer of the ecosystem in places where there’s a captive audience, while providing key stakeholders at this level with the resources and strategies that aim to add depth to the base.