World Rugby Women’s Strength and Conditioning Seminar

In August 2021, World Rugby announced it would be hosting innovative seminar series aimed at national team coaching staff. The World Rugby’s Women’s Strength and Conditioning Seminar is set to include three unions from Asia: Hong Kong, Japan, and Kazakhstan.

The governing body said that these “will further enhance the women’s game and boost high-performance outcomes ahead of Rugby World Cup 2021, playing in 2022.”

World Rugby Women’s Strength and Conditioning Seminar 2021

Nineteen national unions have been invited to attend the seminar series – all of which are either qualified or in the process of qualifying for the RWC tournament in New Zealand in 2022.

Peter Horne, World Rugby High-Performance General Manager, said: “This is the first time we will run a strength and conditioning seminar series tailored specifically to women and the people that coach women’s rugby.”

World Rugby said the seminars series will be held online over four days in August and September 2021 covering a range of topics including strength, acceleration and endurance training, developing team training culture, understanding the specific needs of women players and Rugby World Cup preparedness.

World Rugby’s Executive Committee approved a £2.6million Rugby World Cup High-Performance Preparation Fund earlier in the year following the postponement of the RWC 2021. Nicky Ponsford was also appointed as the Women’s High-Performance Manager in 2021.

Here is the full list of Rugby Unions involved in the World Rugby seminars:

• Australia
• Canada
• Colombia
• England
• Fiji
• France
• Hong Kong
• Ireland
• Italy
• Japan
• Kazakhstan
• Kenya
• New Zealand
• Samoa
• Scotland
• South Africa
• Spain
• USA
• Wales

Asia RWC 2021 Qualifiers

There is still no confirmed date for the three Asian women’s XVs teams RWC qualifiers after the dates were changed several times over the past 18 months due to COVID-19.

A tentative date of October 2021 was announced by Asia Rugby but no confirmations have been made.

Women’s Rugby 2021

August and September see a number of global women’s rugby events.

• The HKRU Women & Girls Conference 2021 takes place in September 2021 and participants can sign up for free.
• Hong Kong will see the Societe Generale: Fast, Femme and Furious 2021 take place as a pre-season tournament.
• The Asia Rugby U18 Girls 7s tournament is scheduled to take place in Tashkent from September 18-19 2021. (This is set to at least include India, UAE and Uzbekistan)
• Oceania Rugby has dedicated the whole of September 2021 to the women’s game under the title of Oceania Unstoppable – Women in Rugby month.