Western Province Rugby Union President Mr Thelo Wakefield and members of the senior management held an interactive workshop on transformation, in line with SARU’s Strategic Transformation Plan.
Western Province Rugby Union President Mr Thelo Wakefield and members of the senior management held an interactive workshop on transformation, in line with SARU’s Strategic Transformation Plan.
The Strategic Transformation Plan seeks to transform rugby in South Africa at all levels by 2019, and the workshop held by the WPRFU demonstrates their commitment to that imperative.
Areas of focus in the workshop included changing the profile of rugby in the Western Cape, improving access to the game, improving the skills and capacity of its participants, community involvement as well as Employment Equity and Preferential Procurement.
The meeting was facilitated by Mr Thelo Wakefield, chairperson of the Transformation Committee Mr Moneeb Levy, the General Manager of Amateur Rugby Mr Danny Jones together with the Director of Rugby Mr Gert Smal and the professional coaching staff.
The professional team management included coaches Robbie Fleck, Paul Treu, John Dobson, Nazeem Adams and Jerome Paarwater, DHL Stormers team manager Chippie Solomons and the High Performance Manager Greg Hechter.
Andri Stander and Gareth Wright represented the Western Province Rugby Institute (WPRI).
The meeting assessed the performance of WP Rugby on all elements of the transformation scorecard for the 2015 season and workshopped key strategies for the next few seasons.
The focus group re-assessed and identified areas of improvement within the current policies on talent recruitment, player retention as well as charting a clear career path for all players from school level right to the professional level.
The discussion included a SWOT analysis where the key challenges were unpacked and opportunities identified to constantly improve the WP Rugby brand.
It was noted that this will take a lot of hard work behind the scenes by everybody within the union along with an aggressive process to get a project plan in place, which is a system responsibility rather than one which relies solely on the input of individuals within the system.
Mr Wakefield said that it is important that the WPRFU is proactive in addressing transformation at all levels of the game.
“The WPRFU is fully committed to the Strategic Transformation Plan and is intent on improving its already impressive transformation record even further.
“We have to concentrate on our schools and get the system working properly because it starts there, and we have to bring more players through for this to filter through to the higher levels,” he said.
A follow-up workshop is planned to take place within the next month.