FRU hires consultant to educate coaches on children’s physical development

Around 50 school and club coaches attended a workshop each in Suva and Nadi in regard to physical development this week. High-Performance consultant to Fiji Rugby, Marty

Hulme conducted a one-day programme where coaches were told of ways to help bridge the gap in our children’s physical development.

Hulme said the workshop basically focused on the kids around the age of 14 to 16 and the ways coaches in school and club teams can assist in their physical development before they reach the 18 and begin to play full contact rugby. “We did a planning on physical development of athletes basically the young children,” he said.

“We are trying to motivate the schools and the most important things for the coaches, teachers and educators is to know little bit about long term development. The importance of also putting in some infrastructure and planning in place.”

Hulme added that to build a strong foundation they need data and therefore the participating coaches were asked to supply their school and club data.

“The initial part was try and create some Fijian data that we can start working on so we would like the schools to start working on that and to start implementing that into the programme. After getting the data we can progress forward and start moving young athletes into an area which we can develop.”

He said that once the physical development program is fully running, it will certainly be of a benefit to the kids and the rugby union as whole.

“Once they get message across and are able to do the functional work then it will certainly benefit the young kids. These kids, I mean the 14 to 16 years old, by the time they move up to elite, the coaches can easily work with them. At the moment the training age of some of the Fijian athletes is late so if we can start developing these players early by the time they are 18 years old they will have a lot of great functional work ethics planted into them” said Hulme.