THE ARU Junior Gold Program kicks off again this weekend with trials for the 2015 Northern Inland 15s and 17s teams being held at The Armidale School tomorrow.
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The competition phase of the program was introduced this year and pitted Northern Inland against teams from Sydney, the Hunter, ACT and South Australia.
Next year it will ramp up another notch with a NSW JCG team to be selected to play a Queensland JGC team in early April.
Northern Inland has tweaked its structure slightly.
“We’re going with a different coaching structure as well as a different program structure,” hub manager Jamie Moore said.
Rather than separate 15s and 17s coaches, they’ve opted for an overall head coach to look after both teams.
He’ll be supported by a development coach, two skills coaches and a strength and conditioning coach.
Morgan Martin is the new head coach and will be assisted by Jeff Watt as the development coach, Tony Mills as backs skills coach and Daniel Bowcock the forwards skills coach with Pirates star Jake Douglas coming on board as the strength and conditioning coach.
“Like any new competition, you’ve got to be evolving,” Moore said.
He said they feel one head coach is a more effective structure for the pathway of not only the players but the coaches.
They have also changed the training structure of the program.
“We’ve got a pre-Christmas structure and a post-Christmas structure,” Moore said.
From tomorrow they will select a squad of about 40 in each age group for the pre-Christmas phase.
That will be one satellite day and a three-day camp at TAS early in December.
From that, the squads will be whittled down for another satellite day, and three-day camp in February, which will lead them into the competition phase.
Moore said they would be taking walk-up registrations but would prefer people to pre-register.
They can do that by following the links on the Northern Inland Junior Gold Facebook page. Cost is $20.
The trial will run from 11am.