World Rugby’s Get Into Rugby programme is currently active in 28 of the 31 registered unions in Africa and has resulted in well over 100,000 new players being introduced to the sport since its launch in 2012.

In the last five months alone, 45,000 players – a third of them female – have participated in rugby-based activities, and Jean-Luc Barthes, World Rugby’s Rugby Services Manager for Africa, attributes the significant gains to the appointment of four Regional Development Officers (RDO).

“Successfully delivering Get Into Rugby is the number one goal of their job description and they are the main reason behind the success we’ve enjoyed,” said Barthes.

“For the programme to keep alive in countries where the unions are not always able to reach out to every school, it is vital that the teachers learn how to manage the programme and coach the sessions themselves.

“So the RDOs go into the schools and initially spend three days there, educating the teachers how to best deliver the programmes.”

Award winning programmes

Get Into Rugby festivals will run alongside this year’s Africa Cup Division 2 campaign, which is split into three geographical areas: the North (Burkina Faso, 23-31 May), South (Democratic Republic of Congo, 25-30 May) and Central (Lesotho, 7-13 June).

Niger, who compete in Division 2 North alongside host nation Burkina Faso, Benin, Togo, Ghana and Mali, will get the opportunity to showcase their award-winning work.

“After concentrating on increasing participation in the first two years, we’re now in the process of improving the quality of the GIR programmes,” said Barthes.

“An interesting development has been the introduction of an annual challenge to determine which of the unions is delivering the best GIR project.

“Naturally participation forms part of this but unions are also measured on the number of training sessions that take place and how effectively they communicate their success stories to the Rugby Africa website and Facebook page.

“This year Namibia won the ‘best-practice’ award for World Rugby member unions, Niger took the non-World Rugby member union accolade, while a special award went to Senegal for the creation of a girls-only project.”

Refereeing gains new-found respect

While the increased number of players and coaching sessions is impressive, Get Into Rugby’s role in promoting the values of the game are just as important.

Since the turn of the year Rugby Africa has been trialling a new project, ‘I also play referee’, which officially launches on the morning of the first Africa Cup Division 1A match between Tunisia and Namibia in Tunis on 6 June.

'I also play referee’ is designed to give young players the chance to take up the whistle and officiate in games involving those younger than themselves.

Barthes hopes the benefits of the scheme will be three-fold.

“We feel this will be a good tool in promoting on-field respect, one of the main pillars of rugby’s core values, as well as giving the kids an opportunity to become better players. We are convinced that if a player has a better knowledge of the laws they will be able to play better rugby. Another benefit is that we might incentivise some of the players to become referees of the future although that’s not a number one priority.

“’I also play referee’ will be run by all the unions who run active GIR programmes. It is important that the children who are chosen as referees see it as a reward for good behaviour and having a good attitude rather than as a punishment.

“We’ve already run pilot schemes in a handful of countries and it has worked very well. I was pleasantly surprised by the attitude of all of the kids who took part, it was totally different to what I’ve seen before. Decisions weren’t being contested and they were totally supportive because they understood it’s not easy being a referee.

“We had an experience in Senegal where one of the kids, who wasn’t well-liked and wasn’t considered one of the better players, had the opportunity to referee and he gained a lot of self-belief from it. By the end, his peers had a new-found respect for him.”

As well as strengthening the structure and governance of its member unions, one of Rugby Africa's long-term goals is to provide more playing opportunities for school children aged 12-18.

Player pathway

“At the moment there aren’t many opportunities for children of that age – except in the largest 10-12 unions – and that’s something we want to address,” Barthes explained.

“We need to fill that gap so that there is a seamless player pathway from ages six-seven through to when a player retires.

“To do this we need to get into more secondary schools. We are trying to push the unions to enter into partnerships with the Ministries of Sport and Education because a strong recommendation from either of those two government departments opens doors previously shut to rugby.

“I’m confident if we can get into more schools that we’ll be able to deliver well-run programmes and develop a really strong rugby culture in Africa.”