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In an exciting development for rugby in the United States, USA Rugby has announced a partnership with Taranaki Rugby (New Zealand). The main focus of the partnership will see players and coaches from the USA travel to Taranaki for an eight-week rugby immersion program. The current ITM Cup Champs Port Taranaki Bulls are serving as the hosts for the ground-breaking partnership.
Candidates for the immersion program are going to be chosen from a pool of players that have been identified as high performance players. Those players can come from a variety of avenues such as already in the USA Eagles setup, age-grade National Team players, players in high performance systems, Stars & Stripes players, or the over 400 players that have been through National Tracking Camps this year.
Players chosen for the Taranaki program will be ones that are targeted to be future Eagles or Olympians. The partnership provides possible playing opportunities on a NPC development team and future opportunities for Women’s sevens players.
“It is exciting to form this relationship with USA Rugby,” Taranaki Rugby Chief Executive Officer Michael Collins said in a release from USA Rugby. “Recent results suggest that USA Rugby is a growing force in sevens and 15s and it is great that Taranaki Rugby can assist in their development.”
“Full-time immersions in one of the rugby hotbeds will afford some of our best young athletes and crossovers an accelerated path into the professional game,” said USA Rugby Director of Performance Alex Magleby. “As the game grows stateside, it is important we continue to reach out and collect IP from the best rugby areas in the world to bring back home to augment the strength of the American scholastic-sport model and our other development pathways.”
There will be more information covered on the partnership as details emerge.
