PRESIDENT and EXECUTIVE NEWSLETTER February 2022

Welcome to the new upcoming season 2022 after an anti-climactic finish to season 2021. “They Blew it, A history of ACTRRA” by Peter Lawler [our current patron], records the last time a 1st grade grand final was not contested was from 1942-46 because of World War 2. By any measure, the last 2 years have been very disruptive to our game.

We start our season with the annual bridge-to-bridge Will Boyle Run on 8th February and all are welcome to meet at 6pm at the bottom of Anzac Parade. Thereafter, training will be held on Tuesdays and Thursday at 6pm at Brumbies HQ. We are incredibly fortunate that ACTRRA member Steve Koh has agreed to run our session. Steve is an accredited Exercise Physiologist and Strength and Conditioning Coach and will be brilliantly placed to help us, young and old to get ourselves in better physical shape for season 2022.

Key season dates for your diary are:
Seniors round 1 and Anzac round: Saturday 23rd April – in support of Soldier On.
Juniors round 1: Saturday 7th May.

If you haven’t done so, please log onto Rugby Xplorer, (“RX”) and register. Registration fees for 2022 for all members is $0. Some members will need to ensure your ‘Working with Vulnerable People’ registration is up to date and you record your registration number where indicated. There are some changes on-line coming and it is important you can find your way around RX.

We are finalising the GMG session for this year as it is likely to be run by Brumbies in conjunction with coaching staff from all levels of our competition. More details will follow.

I am thrilled to announce a new sponsor for the next 4 years, Omni Executive. They have been incredibly generous and are funding the provision of an Anzac jersey that will go to all members this year and can be used as a training top after the Anzac round of 23rd April. We have also been able to offset the purchase of one of our new comms sets because of their generosity.  ACTRRA is also grateful for the generous ongoing support of our other sponsors, Canberra Consulting, Aulich Law, Waidt Services Australia, and The RUC as well as the continued support of the staff at Brumbies.

I would like to thank the support from the Executive to get things ready for season 2022 but particularly to our Coaching and Grading staff; Jack Cunningham our chair and senior coordinator ([email protected] ), Dennis Beissner who has kindly stepped up as our new junior coordinator ( [email protected] ), Denis Hughes our Referee Development Officer, ( [email protected] ) and to Karl Hamlyn who has volunteered to be our registrar, (email to be advised). We will publish detail of all ACTRRA office bearers but in the meantime please go to our new look website www.actrra.org.au Thanks to many hours of hard work Dennis Beissner the website now has a less cluttered look and should be easier to navigate as well as having some useful links. There is more to happen with the website, but I would like to publicly thank Dennis for his amazing efforts.

Please keep an eye on your email for upcoming events as well as the new calendar on the website landing page. These will be the primary means of communicating throughout the year.

 I look forward to seeing you all at training events and our pre-season seminar.

Yours in rugby,
Sam Whittle
​President, ACTRRA