How to join a rugby club

People are always asking over on the boards.ie rugby forum about how to join a rugby club in their area. This might seem a little late in the rugby season for this, but as one of the lads on the forum said, we’re only 3 months into the season and really stuck for replacements already!

Anyway, joining a club is fairly a simple task. You need to be ready, and you need to find a club. I’m going to spell out some of the things that seem really obvious just so there’s nothing missed.

Being ready for rugby – your general strength and fitness

• You don’t need to be “marathon fit” to play rugby
• You do need to be able to run a lap or two. This will improve drastically after a couple of training sessions
• You don’t need to be able to bench press 300lbs
• You do need to be able to bench press 30lbs. If you’re concerned about strength, join a gym and do a general fitness programme that includes some resistance (weights) exercises.

After taking a break from rugby for 3 years I spent almost 2 years getting back in shape before rejoining a club. This was a little over the top, but it’s not a bad idea to spend a couple of months in the gym working on core body strength and aerobic fitness.

Being ready for rugby – skills and rules

If you’re brand new to rugby you’ll need to learn the rules. You should pick these up in training and even during matches (you’re bound to give away a couple of penalties). You can improve your knowledge by reading up on the rules on the IRB website and simply watching a match on tv, especially with a vocal rugby fan beside you.  My sponsor How to Play Rugby E-book has some great info for beginners, highly recommended if you’re new to the game.

A lot of people talk about taking up tag rugby during the summer can help, but I’m not a fan of it. I’ve seen more people with broken hands in 3 months of tag rugby than I’ve seen in 16 years of the real thing.

Don’t worry too much about your skill level. You’ll be joining a club at the most junior of levels and if you’re good you will quickly be promoted up through the teams. Managers of the higher level teams in a club are always looking for replacements and new squad members. I’m looking at this from the perspective of a senior club fielding 5 mens teams, a girls team, U21s and U18s. Some smaller clubs will only have 1-3 teams so you won’t get much choice where you end up. Which brings us on to…

Finding a rugby club

Find the phone number of a club in your local area. Pick somewhere close by because you’ll be travelling there a lot. It’s also nice to be able to walk home after having a few pints! Don’t know how to find one? Try the IRFU branch websites via these links or on the irishrugby.net site. Otherwise google a few placenames or ask someone you think might know if there’s one around. You should be able to get the phone number off Directory Enquires.

Ring the club during office hours. You’ll probably be talking to either a full-time club secretary, or in the case of a smaller club, an answer machine. Leave your details and ask for a call back about “joining one of the junior teams”. Ideally what you want to do is get the name of a manager and the time they train at.

You can then just turn up at the club with your rugby gear, go into one of the changing rooms and tog out. Don’t worry if you don’t know anybody. When you’re togged, go outside and ask where the person who’s name you got is. (s)He’s probably out warming up with one of the teams. Go and introduce yourself. An alternative to this is get the mobile number of the manager and give him a call, he’ll sort you out.

If, for some reason, you couldn’t get in contact with anybody, what you can do is go down to the club at 7pm on Tuesday or Thursday. Every rugby club I’ve ever seen has had training at those times :)

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I think I’ve covered most things here, if you can think of anything I’ve missed, or need something clarified then please leave a comment or suggestion. Cheers!

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