More interest for women’s coaching in the Country

One of Fiji Rugby Development Unit’s focus right now is to drive many women as possible into coaching and get them accredited.

FRU Development Unit has been successful so far after rolling out World Rugby level 1 women’s coaching course around the country, and seeing a spike in participants showing interest.

At the beginning of this year, 12 participants who have successfully completed their level 1 coaching course began their level 2 course, and yesterday a course refresher was held by FRU Development to touch base and test these 12 participants on their coaching philosophy.

Fiji Rugby Development Manager Koli Sewabu said that the refresher was to test the participants and see how they’ve developed their level 2 coaching fundamentals, while also exploring into the micro-skills development of being a level 2 coach.

A discussion forum was also held to unpack the current challenges all these women coaches are facing on and off the field.

“The participants had an open discussion on current challenges they’re currently facing being a women rugby coach, not only from a technical aspect of the game but also administrations, what happens outside the field, the support they get from the Unions, administrative levels,” Sewabu said.

These participants are mostly coaches and managers at various Provincial women’s team, and they’re looking to extend their knowledge on coaching platform and help their respective teams thrive into another level.

As part of their refresher yesterday, they visited the Fiji Rugby High-Performance Unit Gym to observe the players and learn some key factor analysis.

Sewabu said that they can also pick up these key factor analysis and other points to take back with them and apply it to their respective clubs.

Seruwaia Lewelete who comes from Vatukoula is confident that she’ll make an impact in the Vatukoula women’s team after completing her level 3 coaching course.

“We’re in the second division and looking at our team’s performance it clearly shows that there’s a need to develop our coaching to lift the team to another level,” Lewelete said

“I’m confident that when I reach my final phase of coaching, I’ll go back to my community and help our team (Vatukoula) to reach the highest point we can reach.” she added.

In Fiji, only 2 women have reached the World Rugby level 3 coaching, Fijiana XVs captain Lailanie Burnes and Elenoa who is currently coaching the Tuvalu men’s 7s team.

Fiji Rugby Development is looking to increase this number and get more women into coaching.

In a global context Women’s rugby has been growing rapidly with 25% of global playing population are now women, and also an increase in female rugby fans to 29% around the globe.