In the past 5 Years, Scotland Rugby League has progressed its player pathway by incorporating youth elements. It now stands as the following:

 

Scotland

Scotland A

Scotland Students

Scotland U18

Player Development Centre U16

Player Development Centre U15

 

Each team has a distinguishing history. The U16s have taken part in the World Youth Championships in Russia in 2005. The U18s have travelled overseas as well including the 2009 European Championships in Serbia. The Students, who are the oldest representative team, have competed in every Student World Cup since 1992.

 

The A team have competed in every Amateur 4 Nations since its conception in 2002. Finally, since its debut at the Emerging Nations World cup in 1995, the senior national team has competed at the subsequent 2 full Rugby League World Cups.

 

The challenge of the next 5 years is to strengthen this structure. Strengthening would be via the following:

 

1. Working with the domestic competitions, provide a representative pathway that helps to recruit and retain, playing, coaching, management and other relevant team personnel to Rugby League in Scotland.

2. To provide a potential series of quality representative experiences, collectively recognised as a pathway for developing international players, ultimately for the senior national team.

This also applies to coaches, managers and other relevant team personnel. Whilst point 2 is likely to be common to all pathways in sports, point 1 recognises the present development context of Scotland Rugby League.

 

Increasing the playing numbers and being able to offer a substantial playing calendar are on going issues effecting not just participation but also performance aspects of Scotland Rugby League.

 

Therefore, whilst like common to all performance programmes it needs to aspire to a higher quality standard, it also needs to retain an ethos, which recognises the regular need to provide positive introductions to the sport.

 

Furthermore it needs to provide experiences of a wider education of the game beyond the immediate match preparation. This is because players and staff will often not have significant playing involvement prior to exposure to the performance programme.

 

One key theme to identify within the performance plan is the need for the game to progress IN Scotland.

 

This is led by the believe that ultimately the credibility of the game will be determined by its status within Scotland, as viewed by the myriad of stakeholders involved ranging from players through to funding bodies such as Sport Scotland and RFL.

 

Therefore it is crucial that the performance programme supports this issue albeit continues to be inclusive of the Exile structures, players, coaches, administrators etc, who have always made significant contributions to Scotland representative sides and will continue to do so.

 

The Exiles structure can continue to make a significant contribution by growing its range of playing opportunities and being able to work more formally into the different representative team selection process. Where feasible, Scotland Residents v Scotland Exiles should be an integral part of selecting the eventual National Team.

 

One of the playing participation strengths of Scotland Rugby League is its youth playing numbers. Therefore it is important to capitalise on this by providing a pathway of quality experiences for such players. This will provide longer term positive performance improvements for Scotland Rugby League.

 

The creation of a Player Development Centre at u14, u15 and u16 is a crucial underpinning program to all future player and coach performance progress up to 2013 and beyond.

 

The RFL's similar Regional PDC will be used as the template but will always require to be modified to meet the actual needs of Scotland youth players.

 

There also needs to be ongoing links, leading to matches, with English Regions and their amateur clubs to expose our players to the required standards at an early age to prepare them for future international competition.

 

Although Scotland Rugby League has seen a recent 400% increase in staffing, it is still of limited professional capacity and also finance.

 

It will continue to need to rely upon volunteers for staffing. Their time can be limited and with no payment usually and it is possible that it needs recognising in relevant forms.

 

Players themselves may incur some cost. This is inevitable although it may be reduced by potentially increased future commercial income of Scotland Rugby League.

 

In summary for all concerned, the quality of experience is vital as to maintain those committed to the cause of Scotland Rugby League.