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#PositiveEnergy: Wicklow Upskill Coaching Set-Up For AIL With IRFU Performance Coach Course

Wicklow Rugby Club assistant coach Colin Younger listens to Tomas O'Leary at the IRFU Performance Coach Course 2021 ©IRFU/Ross O'Donoghue

The IRFU Performance Coach Course is for head & assistant coaches working with advanced teams, with higher technical competencies and understanding of the game.

Colin Younger, assistant coach with Wicklow Rugby Club, undertook the course in 2021 as part of preparations for the club’s first ever campaign in the Energia Women’s All-Ireland League.

“Ambition and commitment are two big words for Wicklow Rugby Club,” he told IrishRugby.ie. “We really want to develop the women’s game in our club as well as we can. We’ve got a huge underage system that is now coming through to the All-Ireland League.

We want to be really competitive in the All-Ireland League. We want to develop our players to be future interprovincial players, to be future international players. That’s the goal of the club.”

You can hear more from Colin in the below video:

“What the course has allowed me to do is understand how I coach, to do things differently and to do things better, and to potentially stop things I’m doing – all with the benefit of improving the set-up within our girls team, helping them develop, coming up with different ideas to help them understand the game a lot better,” he added.

“Help them to be more competitive. Help them to reach the ambitions that they’d like to achieve.

“We want to achieve things over a number of years – not just in one season. This is going to be a really big stepping-stone to bring these ideas onto the pitch and we can build from there.”

Younger continued: “We have a really great young talented group of girls in Wicklow Rugby Club. We’re the envy of many clubs for our development through the underage system.

“I can see the opportunity to help develop the significant talent we have in the club, to be hugely competitive and have a lot of fun at the same time.”

Wicklow host Old Belvedere in round 1 of the Energia All-Ireland League at Ashtown Lane on Friday night (kick-off 8pm).

Click here for more information on the IRFU Performance Coach Course.