Ada Milby – New PRFU Strategy Was Needed To Take The Game Forward

Ada Milby continues to be a shining light in rugby leadership and a role model for aspiring female rugby players and anyone wanting to contribute to the sport. Currently, she juggles the roles of being the Philippines Rugby Football Union (PRFU) president, sits on Asia Rugby committees, and was the first woman elected to the World Rugby EXCO in 2023.

We caught up to delve into several rugby and development-related issues, from the PRFU as an organisation and their strategy, women’s rugby engagement, and much more.

Feature Photo Credit: Hong Kong Sports Sustainability Summit 2024 – Rugby For Good (HKCR) – Ada Milby second from the right

PRFU – Moving To A Decentralised System

Ada Milby started by telling us what’s going on at the PRFU in terms of strategy and the national teams.

“It’s really nice to just be able to chat about Philippine rugby because that’s my background, it’s my roots. We’ve had a pretty big hit, as most Unions had throughout COVID, and it really pushed us into a position to have a hard look at ourselves. I think a lot of unions around the world have had the same sort of wake-up call. 

For us, it was really about not repeating some of the mistakes that we have that led us to the position that we are in, some things are unavoidable, because who expects a pandemic to take you out of three years of rugby? We have got a new strategic plan, we’ve got an injection of new fresh faces into the PRFU board, which re-energises everything”.

Photo Credit: PRFU

Milby was quick to thank the many members who have served on the PRFU board and helped see them through the toughest of times and made a positive impact on Philippines rugby.

“It’s great to also have the impact of new people and new ideas, being able to revisit old ideas with a new look – that’s been fantastic for us. We’re also currently reviewing some of our structures within the club setup, like what the sustainability of a club looks like. How does that tiering system look?

How can we provide better support for a team that just shows up on a Saturday and takes them from 20 players on the pitch to being able to have, you know, women’s, men’s, youth, but probably not a clubhouse if they’re in Manila, because we don’t have the field space, but really being able to put the support in place to make them a club, and not just a group of people that come together on play on a Saturday,” explained Milby.

The PRFU President added that in 2024 the clubs will have a decentralised competition model, whereas in the past, it was all run by the PRFU with a small team of 5-15 people, depending on the year, who did everything from organising schedules to arranging referees.

She expanded on how the new model would work.

“Part of that shift to build capacity with our clubs, is we’re now supporting the clubs to be able to get a club secretary to coordinate with teams within their league, organise their schedule. We will still sort out the referees, but it is about being able to provide different kinds of support. Instead of the clubs paying a fee for us to run everything for them, we’re now actually in a position to give them a hosting grant to be able to support them in running it for themselves. So it’s a shift in our mentality about building the community, rather than trying to do everything ourselves.”

The main perceived benefits of this will be scalability and building capacity which Milby says is a pretty big shift.

Rising Stars Program – Supporting Filipino Rugby Players – Ada Milby

Photo Credit: PRFU – Women’s Rising Stars players

Soft launched in 2023 by the PRFU, but with an official launch in 2024, the Rising Stars program has been launched in partnership with the Philippine Sports Commission.

“They are our major funder from the government and we are super excited about that because essentially we’re able to, I won’t call it semi-professional, but we’re able to provide some training stipends for athletes to commit to rugby.”

Over the past two decades everyone has played rugby for the love of country and the sport said Milby but she said this will allow them to pivot and tell players.

“We want to invest in you. If you’re willing to invest in yourself & you’re willing to commit the time. We want to take everyone along on the four-year journey to try and shift away from so much dependence on the international talent base that we have. It’s really about building more core players that are based domestically in the Philippines…. again it’s a hard look at how we’re approaching the development of the game and being really strategic this time around, making sure we’re providing adequate support wherever we go.”

When asked how the clubs have reacted to taking some of the ownership and how, if it all, the strategy changes the pathway and development for national team selection, Ada Milby told us:

“You probably have had lots of discussions with the Asian rugby unions where there’s such a huge emphasis for the Sevens, it’s where the government’s support generally comes from. It’s where, especially for the Southeast Asia region, that’s where you’ll generally find players are more interested and it has lower barriers to entry. 

There’s a big focus on Sevens for those reasons, and that is true for us. When we’re looking at financials, specifically financial returns for the Union, we know that we’re going to be able to look short-term in the next four-year cycle, there’s a more short-term return for us to look at the Sevens investment piece which includes national training for the Sevens and focused on those domestic players.

But we recognise that it’s really just about rebuilding the whole program, so if Sevens is the introduction, then it could lead them into fifteens later on down the road, as we continue to build.”

Photo Credit: PRFU – Men’s Rising Stars players

Ada Milby herself has represented the Philippines at 7s and fifteens rugby, and still plays the game (in the time since this interview was done, she had won trophies at the Manila Tens 2024 and played with the Laos team at the Kowloon RugbyFest in Hong Kong.)

On the focus change and the PRFU strategy, she admitted there were some “really tough discussions” because (herself included) there are some fifteens rugby diehards.

“We have to be able to contextualise what is in the best interest for our Union, what is in the best interest for our players? What is in the best interest of our community? What are people going to want to watch? If they’re going to come to a rugby game, and for a new market like in the Philippines, Sevens is that interest point for us. So the focus in the short term is on Sevens and using it as a pathway to kind of connect up with our Fifteens.”

Milby hoped that over the course of time it would build in popularity and that the 15s rugby product would still be there, along with some of the other new products like T1 rugby launched by World Rugby in 2023.

Domestically there are still club XVs matches and from a national team point of view, she said they are looking to participate in more one-off Test matches or one-off friendly matches at the 15s level with countries like Guam, Hong Kong, Thailand, etc.

National Team Goals For Philippines Rugby According to Ada Milby

Photo Credit: Asia Rugby FB

The upcoming cycle of rugby, from an Asian and World Rugby point of view, offers a lot of opportunities. In addition to new calendars from both organisations and an expanded Rugby World Cups for men and women, there are also guaranteed SEA Games 7s likely in the next three events which allows Unions to plan around.

We asked what the goal was for the national teams in the Philippines.

Milby said, “This is only me speaking on behalf of myself and not my board or my union. But looking at where we currently sit with our cycle of players & recruiting new players, and players ageing out over the next four-year cycle,  I would say it’s realistic for our women’s team to be competing in sort of the top five over the cycle. For Sevens, we are currently at the Trophy level for both our men’s and women’s as we were relegated last year. That was part of the whole big wake-up call and we had to ask, what do we need to do differently? How do we pivot from this?”

She also explained the different approaches for men and women. With the men, they feel they need to target them at a younger age, while with women, they can get them into the sport at that 18-19-year-old bracket, and still develop them into being an elite athlete.

The local programmes will be used to accelerate the development of local talent, but there might still be a strong reliance on their international talent (a diaspora which is truly global and with players in good leagues around the world) to help bridge that gap and the timeframe. 

Milby is hopeful that the men’s national team can also be “knocking on the door and maybe be in the top three. We have been top three in the last couple of years, so it is possible, but because of the particular way that we’re trying to shift and manage how we build the core of the team,  I would say it’s probably the next eight-year cycle that we’d be looking to knock at the door for the Challenger Series in terms of Sevens rugby.”

Tapping Into Global Filipino Rugby Talent

Ada Milby was clear in saying that they want to remain inclusive of all eligible players and spoke highly of the Magandaquins and Maharlikans programs.

“We’ve kind of got pockets of players now that are in the UK, in Australia, New Zealand, and in the US & Canada – each come with different strengths.

I think what’s important is that our vision in the union is to make rugby really popular in the Philippines, but the Philippines is also so unique, we have such a global citizenship.

Our community is the Filipinos based all over the world, so we made the partnerships official between Magandaquins and Maharlikans whereas before it was like ‘Yeah, we know you guys are doing some stuff out there.’”

Maharlikans Rugby in the UK

The partnership will be key for talent identification, and Milby added “It’s a combination of being able to say, here’s the best that we’ve got overseas or internationally, here’s the best of what we’ve got locally, let’s get them together and at the end of the day, the coach will pick the best 12 (for Sevens for example). Because we don’t want to discount the fact that we are global citizens, we want the best 12 of our Philippine community wherever they are in the world.”

Developing Rugby Coaches In The Phillipines

At the time of the interview, the PRFU was in search of a new women’s sevens national team coach who specifically would prepare the team for the Asia Rugby Trophy 2024 tournament.

“As part of our new strategic direction, we’re also putting in support systems for domestically based coaches. How can you get the players to get to the level if you don’t have the coaching staff in place?

So we’re piloting for the first time ever, a coach mentorship program. We have selected five or six coaches who are based in the Philippines and who are planning on being based here for a long time. I think all of them are heritage players or were born and raised in the Philippines.

We will partner them up with a master trainer from World Rugby. The World Rugby pathways are amazing and they will have broad courses about specific tactics, and specific technical skills and build their capacity and be able to increase their technical knowledge and improve the player’s ability to get there.

For the Rising Stars (who will compete in the SEA 7s in Singapore in May), we actually will send two coaches who are part of that mentorship program, who are coaching the rising stars – so everyone is there in a development capacity.”

Photo Credit: PRFU

Women’s Rugby Development

From a World Rugby perspective, we were interested to hear Ada’s views on the development of the women’s game. World Rugby has the Gallagher Academy and Capgemini Leadership programmes. We also pointed out that of all the SVNS Series and Challenger Sevens teams, there are scarce women in the coaching roles and whether more should be in those positions on merit.

“This is always actually a really tough one, and it probably isn’t a very popular stance to say that I’m not fully on board with having a quota system. I think that there is somewhere in there a balance between making space for people of diverse backgrounds and also making sure that you’re getting the right people for the job,” said Milby.

“This is a conversation that people have been having for years and something that I internally struggle with. For instance, in our mentorship program, we’ve actually specifically said that we would have at least 50% of participants in that pilot program be females, but it doesn’t mean that they will be selected to coach national teams in the future.

But we’ve at least created the space for them to come along the journey to develop their skill sets and to have a crack. In the same way that I didn’t want to create quotas for domestically based players versus overseas players in national team selection, we always want to make sure that we’re selecting the best team on the day and want to make sure you’re giving the team the best coaches to support them.”

Ada Milby added, “It’s about creating opportunities, not discriminating based on any of those diverse background pieces, and at the end of the day, making sure you’re picking the right person for the job.”

Photo Credit: BritCham HK – Ada Milby speaking at the Hong Kong Sevens 2024

Milby was also full of praise for the World Rugby programmes which help provide a toolbox for development, of which she has been a beneficiary.

“It’s through the exposure of programs like that and being able to connect with other leaders globally about different ideas, what are they doing and that collaborative effort has really fed into my process about where I am now in cascading our own programs, being able to provide our own mentorship stuff and sort of building my own capacity and how we approach the issue on diversity,” she added.

SEA 7s

Ada discussed how useful it is to have more regional tournaments and said, “not just for Southeast Asia, but for any regional, multi-sport games, how do you ensure the continuity of the games when the host country decides ‘Actually, rugby is not a priority for us’ (referring to the past two SEA Games, not including rugby).

“There’s been a lot of initiatives, at least in Southeast Asia, between the Southeast Asia unions to say, how can we make sure that this becomes an annual fixture, regardless of inclusion in the SEA Games? How can we better support them (Vietnam and Cambodia) to make sure that they want to be included in those future Southeast Asia games?

It is definitely a challenge and it’s a group effort and I think the more that we can have the mindset that we’re actually all here to help each other – we’ll all be able to rise up together.”

Asian Rugby Development Interviews

• Maharlikans – PRFU Talent ID Programme A Global Club For Filipino Rugby.
• Brian O’Driscoll – We’re Definitely Going In The Right Direction.
• Sir Gordon Tjietiens On Taking Chinese Women’s Sevens Rugby To The Next Level.
• SEA 7s 2024 Teams & Format Announced.