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STRUAN PERFORMANCE CAMP CELEBRATES 30th BIRTHDAY
Posted: 01/Aug/08
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Scottish Rugby, in conjunction with the SSC - a club for the youth of Scotland is celebrating a special 30th anniversary this week.
The successful Struan performance rugby camp, which has catered for a host of Scotland internationalists in their formative years including Mike Blair, John Barclay, Ben Cairns and Nick de Luca, is being attended by Scotland's top-rated young rugby talent from the U15-U17 age groups.
Earlier in the week the camp was visited by Scottish Rugby Union president, Jim Stevenson, Glasgow Warriors players, Stevie Swindall and Mike Adamson, and will today play host to Scotland coach Frank Hadden.
Jim Stevenson said: "The camp is absolutely fantastic, it's a great get together for the players to look forward to the coming season and is a good opportunity for the players to get to know one another.
Im amazed at the amount of work and effort that actually goes in by the coaches and the admin staff to make this happen.
Nine guys sleeping in a tent for the whole week and having to actually look after themselves; it teaches them a lot of life skills and at the end of it theyre coming away with a lot of new friends."
The intense performance camp puts the young players through a gruelling week-long schedule starting with a wake-up call and morning run at 8am before breakfast, rugby coaching, aquatic recuperation and team building before lunch, specialist coaching clinics up until their evening meal, and expansive rugby games until 9pm.
Grant McKelvey, senior performance development manager and ex Scotland internationalist, is in charge of the camp. He said: Basically what weve got here is the best 175 home based and exile players that have been identified through our performance development framework.
For the U17 and U18 groups this is the start of their respective national programmes and this is a great opportunity for these boys to promote themselves in front of national selectors and the national coaches like Bryan Easson, Gordon Henderson and myself.
For the younger age groups, U15s and U16s, its a chance for them to develop themselves, improve their rugby, their social skills and their team-building skills: working together, dealing with a bit of hardship sometimes - and thats generally the overview of the camp.
Despite the intensive nature of the camps coaching sessions, hard graft on the pitch is just a part of what goes on at the Struan camp.
The boys are in tents and they are not surrounded by the trappings of wealth; they have to do their own washing and we certainly dont run about after them so the guys get an understanding of what they have to do to work effectively as part of a team , added Grant.
I hope that the boys will come away with a bunch of new friends and maybe another 10 or 15 people on their bebo sites. Hopefully theyll have a good week; learning the key national themes that the performance development managers are trying to instil in them and some good social and team-working skills so when they do go back into their clubs, schools or hopefully the national age-grade programmes they can rely on these skills.
Every group will have at least one team building activity specific to them and they can be as simple as standing in front of everyone and telling them a bit about yourself or some small group work, we also have nutrition input.
Twenty-five years ago when I was here as a player they did an excellent job but the main difference is that the majority of the staff were all volunteers. Now the rugby is being delivered by members of staff who are experts in dealing with children of this age, the facilities are slightly better but not much, the river is still as cold as it always was, and the pitches are still as rustic.
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This article was posted on 1-Aug-2008, 20:13 by Hugh Barrow.
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