Welcome to week 2 of the Chat for 2022!  This is a great opportunity to let you all know of the plans that Tasman Rugby and the Division I Rugby Clubs have been working on, around the concept of Club Champions.  At a critical Club Hui last year, the clubs and Tasman Rugby agreed a plan to put in place up to 10 Club Champions, owned by the clubs and collaboratively led by Tasman Rugby, to help us invest a greater level of time and capacity into our community rugby.

The Club Champion project is looking to enhance five key planks of work across our community game:

• Improve the health and sustainability of our rugby clubs across the region;
• Grow the resources across Blenheim and Nelson so that we can deliver our community rugby initiatives;
• Improve the numbers of players who transition from age group rugby back into club rugby (young adults leaving school);
• Improve and enhance our rugby offerings for females and grow the female game (age group and adult rugby); and
• Enhance the pathways for boys and girls to experience representative rugby and enhance our pathways to the Mako male and female programs.

Coming out of COVID, which has really dented the growth of sport across the region over the last two years, we feel strongly that these efforts will greatly enhance our club and age grade rugby and we are confident that over the next two years we can grow our numbers and grow what we offer for both men and women within our sport.

Remember that if you love our game of rugby, but you cannot play the game anymore, you can remain involved in so many ways, and maintain that love of the game – you can coach junior or senior rugby by registering your interest to do so with your local rugby club, you can help the club out on the committee, you can help manage teams at your local club and you can join the Tasman Mako Referees and keep yourself on the field!

Congrats to Kahurangi and Marist who got off to a winning start last weekend in the Division 1 Tasman Premiership.

This weekend there is a great opportunity in Marlborough for people to head out to Endeavor Park, Picton, and watch Waitohi take on Central this weekend.  In Nelson / Tasman, you can pick up the action at Jubilee Park (Waimea Old Boys hosting Stoke), head over to Cooks Reserve to watch Kahurangi take on Wanderers, or pop down to Trafalgar Park and watch Nelson take on Marist.

See you round the grounds of our region.

#FinzUp

Lyndon Bray

Article added: Thursday 07 April 2022