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RUGBY SPIRIT IS ALIVE AT ST PETERS Earlier this term, resident Sports photographer, Anthony Cox, asked Rugby Coordinator, Russell Todd, about his vision and goals ahead of the AIC season. ANTHONY COX
Digital Marketing and Design Officer
Q) Being new to the College last year, what were some things you set out to achieve in the Rugby Season, this year and beyond?
Championships, where we just missed out on winning the Grand Final in both the U13 & U18 divisions.
In Rugby, we are looking to establish clear focus and development areas for our students. We have started by aligning the program into three clear focus areas; Primary (Years 5-6), Junior (Years 7-9) and Senior (Years 10-12) where the focus is on participation, performance, and development, respectively. Future work in this space will be the development of a skills curriculum so that we can ensure our players are able to achieve certain milestones on a time line. This will also help to give our Coaches some direction around their sessions.
Following Rugby 7s, our Opens group began their pre-season preparation where we spent time focusing on core skill development and games-based learning opportunities. This fun training block spends a lot of time playing variants of different games to develop players fundamental skills and decision making.
Beyond this, we hope that we can get back to touring in the coming years so to really bolster our students' St Peters Rugby experience. Q) What are your goals for the 2022 Season? First and foremost, I want the young men playing to enjoy their experience. Regardless of results, I want them to enjoy learning about the game, developing as players, and creating friendships and memories with their school mates. I would love the growth of Rugby in the school to continue and seeing Mayer Oval packed with Rugby shirts at the start of 2023! Q) Can you tell us what the boys have been doing in the lead up to this year’s season? We have been fortunate that the school have supported our pursuit of beginning to develop a Rugby 7s program. So, the first half of Term 4, 2021, revolved around advancing that, culminating in the State Rugby 7s
Plus Ultra | June 2022
In Term 1 this year, our Opens players came straight back into pre-season training and competed in the Brisbane Junior Rugby Union (BJRU) Lightning Series Club Competition. Participating in this competition was a first for the College and was very important for the Opens to build relationships, experience and become battlehardened ahead of the AIC season. Q) What have been some of the highlights during pre-season? For the Opens it was getting to represent the College in the BJRU Club Competition for the first time. The players represented the College exceptionally well and the results followed, finishing third place overall. For the wider program, we were lucky to welcome Queensland Reds, Jock Campbell and Lawson Creighton, to a training session, which was an engaging experience for our Juniors. Additionally, we have close to 40 more students playing Rugby this year, so we’re starting to build positive interest and engagement in the game. It’s great to see teams supporting each other on. On Round 5 game day at ‘home’, we assigned the Senior players to one of the
