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00:00A couple of years ago, we started to look at the player pathway and where players would
00:11enter talent development experiences and started to ask some questions around what we could
00:15do to make it more effective in terms of player retention, optimal in terms of player development,
00:21but also provide a bigger playing cohort for regions to begin working with when their academies
00:28We took a look particularly at the 14-16 window and were concerned at the risk we had with
00:36our current model of how young players were when they were selected, the presence of competition
00:42driving selection decisions, which all of the literature would suggest overvalues early
00:47development, certain physical characteristics, players who play rugby for a long period of
00:52time are overvalued in early selection. The Jewish Shield District Schools Programme became
00:59quite competition driven and we felt there might be a better way to build on the heritage of the
01:04Jewish Shield, a hundred years old, very proud competition, and bring it into a more modern
01:12approach. As a result, we moved the competition to the year 11 to the end of 16th year and expanded
01:19the development programme so that it now runs for 22 months across year 10 and year 11, culminating
01:25in the competition for playing opportunity that is the Jewish Shield. So now players are in receipt
01:31of a 22-month experience before any sort of selection onto a competition programme, which
01:38is also vital, but we've seen that as now as a two-year playing and development experience.
01:43The positive signs we're seeing from the pathway reform would lead early days to kind of what we're
01:54seeing is more players engaged. Our initial target was could we engage 25% of the registered playing
02:00population, our club playing population, we've actually hit 60% of that in our year one. The
02:06EPP is split over a two-year programme as well, so it's very much around the quality of the
02:11development and opportunity for all to come in, mixed with that play competition, and then move
02:17into that Jewish Shield filter in the second year with a competition pre-Christmas, leading into
02:23RAG. You know, we've seen over 300 players now have been in that RAG selection from the initial
02:30year one programme. And finally, we've aligned a calendar, so we're trying to join up all the
02:37relationships that are important around that EPP phase, so we can get our kind of blocks of
02:44quality development, mixed with that appropriate competition, you know, sprinkled also with the
02:49year nine and the year ten national schools competition, because we felt that was a better
02:5412-month competition programme about keeping players retained and playing for their schools.
03:00The Emerging Player Programme is supported by the WRU through physical resource, which is our
03:10hub officers are very actively engaged in running this. We also appoint level two, level three
03:17referees to be supported across the programme. We've also engaged in skill centres creation with
03:23support funding to do that, with the principle being that this is a regional-led WRU-supported
03:29programme, so working in conjunction with the regions. We have a very close relationship now
03:33with the regions to be owners of this programme alongside us with the standards. It accumulates
03:39in a Road to Principality opportunity, within our Doer's Shield competition and within our years nine and ten.