Gallagher High Performance Academy Extended By World Rugby

World Rugby confirmed they have extended the Gallagher High Performance Academy, a fully immersive global development and leadership programme which was established in 2023, and announced the first batch of coaches for 2024.

The Academy’s mission is to increase the “prominence of female coaches and other high-performance roles at elite levels of the sport,” said the sports governing body.

First introduced ahead of the inaugural WXV 15s tournament in 2023, the Academy forms part of World Rugby’s strategic plan to accelerate the development of women’s rugby. The first batch of coaches included 16 women from 16 nations with each participant embedded with their respective nations, before and during WXV. This provided them with professional development opportunities and the opportunity to gain valuable experience working in a high-performance sporting environment.

World Rugby Chief of Women’s Rugby, Sally Horrox said: “As we celebrate the second year of the Gallagher High Performance Academy by extending the reach of the programme to encompass all formats of the women’s game, we are not just shaping coaches, we are sculpting the future of women’s rugby.”

Horrox added of the goals, “The Academy enables a clear pathway for aspiring female coaches and provides vitally important coaching opportunities as we strive towards our ambitious target of 40 per cent female high performance coaching roles at Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025.”

World Rugby is now extending the Gallagher High-Performance Academy to all formats of the women’s game. The main focus is on:

• Talent identification
• Professional support
• Championing the next generation of international coaches

2024 Gallagher High Performance Academy

World Rugby announced 10 coaches to be inaugurated into the Gallagher High Performance Academy, in 2024, and all of the women are sevens coaches, who were embedded with their respective nations for the HSBC SVNS Series.

World Rugby says additional female coaches from other formats of the game will be announced at a later time.

Chris Mead, Chief Marketing Officer for Gallagher, explained: “We are proud of and excited for the extension of the Gallagher High Performance Academy into all formats of women’s rugby.

The growth of the programme is a testament to its success and impact in its inaugural year, providing meaningful career development. Expanding the programme to make it more inclusive will further accelerate the growth of women’s rugby around the world and continue to raise opportunities for women both on and off the pitch.”

(Editors Note – It would seem appropriate if the Academy was extended to the World Rugby HSBC Sevens Challenger Series teams as they are generally non-Tier-1 and have greater budgetary constraints?)

2024 Gallagher High Performance Academy Inductees

There is one Asian coach selected, Yuka Kanematsu from the Japan Rugby Football Union. She was a former Japan Women’s Sevens team player, as assistant coach of the national sevens side and head coach of both Japan’s Women’s Under-18s Sevens and women’s Sevens Youth Academy.

Kanematsu said, “I hope that my participation in the Gallagher High Performance Academy will help me to discover clues to establishing a world-beating Japan Sevens team,”

• Yuka Kanematsu (Japan)
• Shannon Parry (Australia)
• Nivia Ferreira (Brazil)
• Emma Delory (Canada)
• Sarah McKenna (GB)
• Rose Thomas (France)
• Emily McKeown (Ireland)
• Patricia Garcia Rodriguez (Spain)
• Jackie Kriel (South Africa)
• Irene Gardner (USA)

The ten newly inaugurated coaches for the 2024 Gallagher High Performance Academy undertook a rugby coaching masterclass at Dignity Health Sports Park, in Los Angeles and were joined by players and coaches from grassroots clubs within the local community.

Gallagher, a global insurance brokerage, risk management and consulting services firm, is an Official Partner of Women’s Rugby, WXV 2023 and 2024, and Women’s Rugby World Cup 2025,

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