Recently we met at Club level to discuss the vision for the future of the London Scottish Red Lions Touch Rugby Club and designed a Development Plan for 2016 and beyond.
A lot has been done to consolidate our presence and visibility, player’s attendance and membership and the administrative structure in the past year.
The stronger links with the O2 Touch Team at England Rugby are bearing positive results and benefits. We partnered with other clubs and this will prove invaluable for our continuous future growth; crucially we started a conversation with the England Touch Association (the Governing Body of Touch Rugby in England).
We have around 90 register players using the O2 Touch App; also five qualified (England Touch Association Level 1) Touch Rugby Referees.
Based on the large number of players attending in 2015 we have decided to re-develop the structure, introducing for the time being three squads:
– The Red Lions Warriors
– The Red Lions Celts
– The Red Lions Thistle
The plan is to assign to each individual squad a coach, to help developing skills so every player has the opportunity to improve and to play at higher level at some point.
It will be a gradual re-structuring and we are not creating barriers between teams! Players can develop on skills and move at senior level.
The Red Lions Touch stays as One Club as part of the larger London Scottish family. The new structure is to help to facilitate development of skills for everyone.
We will run our Monday sessions as before, with very short targeted coaching sessions.
The England Touch Association (Director of High Performance, Tim Osborn) will provide a Level One Coaching to the following members:
Louis Keen, Nick Hancock, James Sharp, John Charles Marker.
The Surrey and Middlesex Touch League, both Summer and Winter Editions, have been a success. We want to continue the franchise in Spring and then in Autumn, however having taken on board comments from other clubs, it will be a more ‘social’ and ‘development’ project.
We are planning to enter a team into a Summer Into-Touch League and also considering signing the affiliation to England Touch, allowing us to enter into the various national ET leagues (DTS, UTS, CTS, NTS etc.).
We have a busy Spring and Summer with other tournaments lined up so we count on the commitment of members and players to bring our Touch Rugby Club to the next level.
