Player Development

We are here to focus on the holistic personal development of the professional rugby players to ensure that they are equipped with the necessary skills and education to be successful in life outside of rugby.

Our Player Development Programme consists out of 6 pillars:

Personal Mastery

Vulnerabilities

Career and Education

Life Skills

Mental Health

Transition

Our Mental Well-being Hotline: 076 349 3409

Personal Mastery

The personal mastery sessions’ aim is to set up a game plan for our members’ lives outside of rugby. We do this by exploring the following:

Personal Development Plans
- We have one-on-one sessions with each of our members to develop a personal development plan by exploring their current situation and vision for the future. Thus ensures that they have a game plan in place for life outside of rugby.
- We monitor our members’ progress by having one-on-one follow up sessions with them.
Personal Mastery Presentations
The focus of these group sessions will be to explore:
- self awareness
- emotional intelligence
- mindset

Vulnerabilities

We arrange and facilitate player sessions about the day-to-day vulnerabilities which they might face. These sessions include the following, but are not limited to:

Sexual consent
Social media
Drinking & driving
Understanding agents & contracts
Night time economy
Brand vulnerabilities

Life Skills

We arrange and facilitate life skills sessions with our players on junior and senior level. These sessions will include the following, but are not limited to:

Finance 101
Anti-doping
Personal mastery
Computer skills
Public speaking
Time management

Mental Health

We work with the North West University (NWU) to provide our players with a 24/7 mental well-being hotline, which they can use for:

Mental Illness
Improving performance
Relationship/family stressors
Life stressors

– We also have mental health presentation sessions with our members during our union visits to create more awareness about the importance of mental health.

Career and Education

Career Guidance
Any player unsure about what he/she wants to do outside of rugby can complete psychometric assessments after which feedback is provided about possible career paths.
The MyPlayers Bursary Programme
Each year we make a number of bursaries available to our players to further their education.
Internship opportunities.
We arrange job shadowing and internship opportunities.
Workplace readiness
We prepare our players for workplace readiness by assisting them on:
- how to draft a CV;
- how to search for jobs; and
- how to prepare for job interviews.
Educational Institutes
We partnered with Educational Institutes to provide our players with exclusive study benefits. Our partners are:
- Wits DigitalCampus
- Oxbridge Academy
- Invuya Institute of Learning
- Milpark Education
- eta College
- Regent Business School

National Development Plan

Our National Player Development Manager works with managers from the Lions, Bulls, Sharks, Western Province and Cheetahs to develop and maintain a standard player development framework and curriculum.

As players’ organisation we want to ensure that all unions address player development in an unswerving and consistent manner to safeguard the members’ development outside of rugby, especially when they move from one union to another.

Part-time player development managers (PDMs)

Our Part-time PDMs will carry out the Player Development Programme and will also draft Personal Development Plans for all senior players.