In term 2, the Bay of Plenty Rugby Union won't be running the regional and Baywide RIPPA Rugby World Cups anymore. Instead, they are introducing Rugby 5's to primary school students.

In 2020, when the Covid pandemic struck, New Zealand Rugby (NZR) cancelled the 2020 National RIPPA Rugby Championships.

In 2021 and 2022, even though NZR had cancelled the national event, the Bay of Plenty Rugby Union still ran the regional (EBOP, CBOP and WBOP) and Baywide RIPPA Champs for year 3-4 and year 5-6 primary school students, whilst we navigated the post covid world. Now, with all restrictions and vaccine mandates a distant past, a new format of rugby will take its place.

What is Rugby 5's?

Rugby 5's is for year 5-6 students playing 5-a-side tackle rugby on a 1/4 sized rugby field with no scrums or lineouts.

It will be launched in the latter half of term 2 with four 1-day regional tournaments (Western Bay x2, Central Bay and Eastern Bay), culminating in a Southern Chiefs Region Tackle 5's Championships where the top 4 teams from King Country, Eastern Bay, Central Bay and Western Bay will play. Boys and girls will play in single sexed teams.

As a lead in to this new format, Bay of Plenty Rugby will deliver ‘tackle clinics' in all schools for year 3-6 students that wish to participate, to give them the confidence to play tackle rugby without the need to learn scrums or lineouts.

On top of this, Smallblacks safety courses will be offered for those parents that wish to give coaching a go.

GM Community Rugby Pat Rae comments, 'Sport Bay of Plenty are leading a piece of work to create a seasonal sporting window for all sporting codes for tamariki (aged 5-13) and rangatahi (aged 14-18) so that sports can separate their offerings into 'Summer” and Winter” windows. Our tamariki and rangatahi can play RIPPA, RIP and 7's as Rugby's summer offerings and these will be delivered during terms 1 and 4 of the school calendar.

For the winter window, tamariki and rangatahi can choose to play 5's at primary school, or 10's and 15's at junior clubs and 10's and 15's at secondary schools. This means that if kids choose RIPPA or RIP Rugby as their summer sport, they can go off and play another sport altogether in the winter window or vice versa.”

Rae continues, 'We have a very popular primary school RIPPA/RIP rugby module programme in the summertime and a strong junior club rugby system in the wintertime. However, we are being told that there's still major apprehension, mainly from parents about letting their children play tackle rugby. What we're hoping is that this new offering (Rugby 5's) will be a less daunting arena to have a go and because it's just a one day offering, kids from other codes can try it out.”

School Sports Co-ordinators can head to the Bay of Plenty Rugby website for more details and entry details by clicking here.