It's a sight that will delight any Rugby pursuit: all four Australian national coaches together breaking down the game with the next generation of coaches.
That's what the maiden Performance Coach Alumni Conference has created, intended to engage and support Performance coaches within our rugby ecosystem.
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Rugby Australia and the Member Unions have created the program to inspire and support coaches to be the best they can be in their chosen environment.
The program is designed for pathways and performance coaches who are either coaching at premier grade or 18-20 Pathways teams.
It's one of the first times a national body has brought together all national coaches, with Wallabies coach Joe Schmidt, Wallaroos coach Jo Yapp and Sevens coach Tim Walsh and Liam Barry taking part in a Q&A with participants.
Schmidt, Yapp and Walsh also ran modules and clinics alongside assistants Laurie Fisher, Geoff Parling and Mike Cron.
"We did a curriculum review in 2024 over three days with many different stakeholders and redid the whole program to be a four-day program with two camps held in January every year. The big feedback we got from the alumni was there wasn't enough technical/tactical in it," Head of Community Coaching Michael Magriplis said.
"What we've done is we've made the Sunday the technical/tactical and turned it into a conference for all the alumni, all the past people that have completed that course, to come in.
"We had all the national coaches and other people coming in and delivering some keynotes and some elective breakouts including Mark Dutton, Team Manager of Red Bull Ampol Racing, as our keynote speaker.
"Joe (Schmidt) ran a one-hour session, Jo Yapp also along with David King (Wallaroos Psychologist)...there's 20, 30 people in each of those rooms listening to them."
"We had some really good presenters for the first time but it's a concept that showed that the alumni are hungry to be part of what we're trying to do at Rugby Australia and they want to give back."
Magriplis is hoping the maiden group of 70 coaches will exponentially grow as further alumni come back to share and build their knowledge.
"We know we've engaged coaches that are important to our ecosystem," he explained.
"We've got ex-franchise coaches and ex-international coaches in the room who are members of this (alumni) cohort...You've got rep coaches from all over the place that have faith that we're going to deliver a really good quality, you know, learning experience for them.
"We try to reinforce our coach development strategy, which is our job as coaches is to make sure that every player gets the best quality coaching experience, full stop. The way we do it from a Rugby Australia and Member Union perspective is that we need to inspire and support all the coaches to be the best they can be in whatever environment they're coaching in.
"...We had a new cohort of 20 that have now started their 18-month program, so they'll have a camp now, camp in 12 months' time to finish it off and then we'll follow them up for six months and then they become alumni and away they go."
