Schools Coaches Open Day
18th January 2024 By The Editor
28 coaches attended the Open Day at the HPC.
An Open Day was held at Munster Rugby’s High Performance Centre last week with schools coaches from throughout the province in attendance.
It is the third such event over the past 16 months. Club and school coaches were invited into the HPC for an Open Day in September 2022 with another Open Day for senior club coaches in October.
The purpose of the event was to further strengthen the alignment between our schools, pathway and Academy system, and senior team.
28 coaches were in attendance and the morning session kicked off with presentations from Head of Rugby Operations Ian Costello and Elite Player Development Officers Tommy O’Donnell and Aiden McNulty.
The schools coaches were provided information on our key attacking and defensive principles along with on-pitch demonstrations of two elements of the Cornerstones programme – ball carry and breakdown.
Rugby Development Manager Eneliko Fa’atau also outlined the support structures in place for schools from the Rugby Development department.
Ian Costello then presented on Munster Rugby coaching practice and behaviours with information on training session planning.
The schools coaches were given tasks to complete while observing a National Talent Squad (NTS) training session, getting the opportunity to see the coaching practice and behaviours, and cornerstone programme presentations being put into practice.
Following this, the schools coaches observed a senior training session and were able to compare and contrast the two sessions.
After providing feedback on the sessions and partaking in a group discussion, there was a Q&A with the senior coaching team with further information sharing.
The event was rounded off with final presentations from Tommy O’Donnell and Ian Costello.
The Open Day was a fantastic opportunity for Munster Rugby staff on various stages of the pathway to share information with schools coaches and was a huge success.
We are very appreciative of all coaches who attended and look forward to hosting more Open Days in the future.
