Now Isn't the Time to Rest

There is a dangerous phase that quietly creeps into a lot of rugby clubs once the final whistle of the season blows.

“You’ve earned a rest, we’ll pick things up in a few weeks.”

It sounds harmless. Reasonable, even. Your players are tired and volunteers deserve a well earned break. After a long season, everyone deserves time to breathe.

This can also be a dangerous time period. Complacency has a funny way of disguising itself as rest. It starts rather innocuously with taking a week or two off of activities. Next thing you know it you’re scrambling to put together a squad to catch a couple of Summer 7s tournaments and you haven’t posted anything to your social media in more than a month.

The clubs that continue growing year after year are retaining players/members, but also keeping the recruiting fires burning. Even during down periods like holiday breaks and the XVs off-season.

The off-season matters when it comes to recruiting. After more than 20 years on the admin side of Rugby clubs, I can tell you without question that the two best times of the year to recruit are during the winter break (New Year, New You angles) and over the summer.

If your club goes completely silent for three months, people naturally assume one of two things:

1. The club is inactive.

2. The club is struggling.

Neither perception helps recruiting.

That doesn’t mean clubs need to run training sessions all summer or demand nonstop commitment from exhausted players. Quite the opposite. The smartest clubs understand that the off-season is not about grinding harder. It is about staying visible, welcoming, and connected to your community.

Offering social touch rugby nights with music followed by some drinks can do more for recruiting than an overly serious conditioning session. A cookout at the pitch can strengthen club culture and create a welcoming space for new recruits to meet players, coaches, volunteers, and members.

A simple social media post showing people laughing after touch rugby reminds outsiders that rugby clubs are communities first and teams second. I’ve said it before and I’ll keep saying it:

Players come for the rugby, but they stay for the community.

People are searching for a sense of belonging. Give that to them. Grassroots rugby has a habit of forgetting this. We market the hits, the intensity, and the toughness. Those things absolutely have their place. Rugby is physical, demanding, and beautifully chaotic.

What keeps people around for years is usually not the collisions.

It is the people. The social atmosphere, the stories, and the laughs.

That is why the off-season becomes such a critical recruiting opportunity. Summer creates a low pressure environment where clubs can introduce people to rugby without immediately throwing them into the deep end. Touch rugby, mixed socials, volunteer projects, and casual training sessions all remove barriers that normally scare people away.

Create a summer environment that allows your club to replace intimidation with curiosity.

The best recruiting happens organically. Word of mouth remains the gold standard for recruiting. Get players to invite a coworker to touch rugby. Set up a tent at a local festival. Someone shares an Instagram Reel of post-training laughs and suddenly a former athlete who misses team culture sends a DM asking when practice starts.

That is how clubs continue to grow.

It’s not magic and you don’t need viral content. What it does take is a consistent presence.

Don’t let your club disappear this off-season. Because once momentum disappears, rebuilding it becomes exponentially harder.

The good news is that meaningful off-season engagement does not require massive efforts. Keep things simple.

Be active, visible, welcoming, and consistent.

That is it.