Rugby clubs get ready for Adult Player Registration
Ahead of the rollout of Adult Player Registration in the 2024/25 season, clubs across the country and at all levels of the game have been helping their players get ready.
Adult Player Registration will digitise the registration process, moving responsibility away from volunteers to individual players who will now register themselves online to play with a club.
This will significantly reduce volunteer workload in future seasons. However, the RFU recognises that in the first season, volunteer input will be required to help with the setup of Adult Player Registration. Abingdon RFC, Wymondham RFC, and North Petherton RFC recently won Gilbert Rugby club kit vouchers of up to £1000 for how they have supported their players with Game Management System (GMS) accounts to verify their email addresses. This is an important step in preparing for Adult Player Registration next season as players will use their GMS account to register to play rugby next season.
The winning clubs have made a strong start to this process and were chosen by a panel who were impressed by the clubs’ creativity and dedication in taking a ‘whole club’ approach to helping their players – supporting their men’s and women’s teams, and newcomers as well as those that have played for the club for many years.
North Petherton RFC
North Petherton RFC identified all players across their club that have GMS accounts but had not yet verified their email address.
The club are a good example of using the close relationships between coaching staff and players to motivate action. Using team group chats, the club’s coaches sent RFU-provided flow charts that show the step-by-step process for players and have followed up with chats at training to make sure that players access their GMS account if they have one.
Membership Secretary Duncan Muir is also contacting individuals to provide further support to players that have not been seen at training to make sure the club is in a great position for next season.
Abingdon RFC
Abingdon Rugby Club is actively assisting players with GMS accounts to verify their email addresses by providing in-club support, such as dedicated Data Officers.
In addition to contacting players to ensure that they understand the importance of email verification, these Data Officers have guided players through the straightforward verification process and are available to address any difficulties players encounter.
Duncan Eames / Abingdon RFC
Wymondham RFC
It has been a successful season on the pitch at Wymondham RFC with both the men’s first and second teams winning promotion. The success has continued off the pitch with the club’s registrars meeting with the coaches of their teams to gain support for contacting all players (including non-contact players) about email verification.
William 'Shay' Good explains that having learned that Adult Player Registration was coming in 2024/25, the club’s plan was to make it as simple as possible for players. The club used the ‘Request Verification’ button on GMS to send an email verification request to players ‘in bulk’ alongside basic instructions indicating how to complete the verification process. This led them to verify over 200 player email addresses very quickly. Club registrars followed up with the remaining players to offer extra support.
Adult Player Registration
From the 2024/25 season, all players, in all formats of the game (including non-contact), will be required to register themselves annually to play rugby within RFU member clubs.
The move to game-wide registration is intended to align the rugby community by extending registration to cover all players, bringing benefits to the whole game and bringing Rugby Union in line with the majority of other Unions and other sports where this is common practice.
The RFU will be hosting stakeholder engagement sessions in May and June 2024 with groups such as Club Registrars and Organising Committees to provide specific, relevant support with Adult Player Registration (dates below).
Building on the programme of webinars for the game, these sessions will be role-specific and tailored to support groups with what they need to know - and details of tasks they may need to complete. Relevant groups and individuals will receive invites to these sessions, so should make sure their role and contact details are up to date in GMS.
These sessions follow online engagement sessions for those involved in player/team selection that took place throughout October 2023, and player useability testing which took during March 2024. These sessions catered for all levels and all formats of the game, helping to create effective two-way engagement.
More information and support with Adult Player Registration is available here.
