Welcome!

Welcome to the latest newsletter keeping you in touch with the news from within the Christchurch Football Club.

Lots of exciting things happening within the club, with the first pre-season games being played in the weekend, and the next games this coming weekend in Hanmer Springs, Junior ‘Have a Go’ Day, Kōhine Development training programme, Netball trials and our new membership cards becoming available! 

Read on for more details…

Senior Rugby

Pre-season Rugby - Mens

Since the early stages of January, our Premiers/Premier Res and Colts have been working hard in organised sessions and extra sessions in their own time! 

There has been a huge influx of players for all three senior sides this year and we, the coaches have been impressed with the commitment and attitude at every training. 

A huge focus of the club this year has been to ensure we have a stand-alone colts side. With a lot of hard work behind the scenes by our colts coaching staff and RDO, it is great to see the strong numbers now attending training in this grade. With over sixty players regularly in attendance, we have seen real growth in the development of all players each and every week. 

After a huge summer of training, it was great for our Premier squads and some Colts to head out to Oxford on the weekend and get some contact in! We were well hosted by a physical Oxford side and definitely gained a lot from our first hit out. 

This weekend we head to Hanmer Springs to play in the “battle of the oldest clubs” and spend some much-needed time together on and off the field. With a full pre-season schedule, we are excited to trial some new ideas, systems and philosophies to build on the mahi we have put in so far this year. We as management across all the open grades are excited about the up-coming weeks leading into the season openers. 

Speaking on behalf of the new coaches, I would like to take the time to thank the club, officials, supporters and players for the warm welcome and support to date! Without getting ahead of ourselves, we are excited to lead these teams in 2024 and work hard for our club. 

Ngā mihi,

Reece Allen

Premier Head Coach

Pre-season Rugby - Womens

Just Warming up!

Excitement is growing for the Women’s team as we move towards our second pre-season game this weekend in Hamner Springs.

Currently training each Thursday (with optional extras on Monday and Tuesday for the die-hard footy fans, (led by Hurricanes representative Izzy Waterman), the girls are being put through their paces by Head Coach Rebecca (Toddy) Todd and guest-coach Mere Baker.

With a few fresh faces (including a couple of girls who have never played rugby before) the team lined up in Oxford last weekend to shake off the summer cobwebs and get amongst the first pre-season hit out.

Numbers still low, each team fielded 10 players, with two 20-minute halves — not that any of the old girls were complaining about the shorter format, as the first 5 minutes were spent blowing out parts of our lungs that we forgot we had.

Rolling subs meant each girl got an opportunity for some gametime and some solid game structure and competitive lineouts quickly opened up the Oxford defence.

The forward pack put on some solid hits, with new Japanese recruit Masami Kawamura chopping legs like salmon in a sushi house and being a menace over the ruck. Quick thinking and fast ball from the inside backs put brand-new winger Manu O’Regan over for a hat-trick in her first game of footy and with a few more tries on either side of halftime, it became a fun win over the Oxford women. Six newbies were introduced to the red and black stripes, each putting in a solid performance to be proud of.

The girls join the CFC lads in Hanmer Springs to take on Nelson on Saturday and welcome any players floating around Christchurch who haven’t committed to a team to join us — there’s plenty of room in the vans!

The team are still looking for players this season so rally your friends, Mum, aunties, sisters and cousins — no experience needed, and we would love to see you!

Nina Poletti

Pre-season Rugby - Colts

Huge announcement for the Colts grade this year - last year we had a combined team with Marist Albion as numbers were low, however this year sees two colts teams being fielded from CFC with both an A and B side.

We are looking forward to having such a large contingent of young men join the club and see what it's like being a part of the red and black.

Christchurch Colts A have had a great start to preseason with good numbers at training each week.  The team is coming together well with some exciting talent ready to run onto the field in the red and black this season.  We are aiming to play a high tempo game which will be exciting to play and watch.

We are also looking forward to wearing the Axemen logo on our team uniforms. The team is working hard and looking forward to some preseason hit outs over the next couple of weeks.  We will then do our final preparation before charging into the season.

The coaching group of Tim Brocket, Mike Watts, Quintin Poole-Nicholas and Daniel O’Sullivan are excited to see what this group can achieve this year.

Important Announcement

We are delighted to announce that the club has entered into a substantial sponsorship agreement with the Oxford Group.

The Oxford Group, owned and operated by long standing CFC member Max Bremner, run several entertainment venues, bars and restaurants in Christchurch, these include:

• Fat Eddies
• KONG
• The Goodhome Ferrymead
• Graythorne’s Halswell 
• The Bog
• Bealey Quarter
• The Bealey Hotel
• Original Sin

All sponsorship monies have been redirected to all senior teams to assist them with the purchase of gear for the season.

The Great News 

As part of this agreement The Oxford Group will supply us with our membership cards. 

The cards will be co-branded featuring both the CFC and The Oxford Group.

Once you have paid your subs you will receive your personalized card. The card has several benefits for you and your team or the club.

Every time you make a purchase at any one of the venues, swipe your card, and 10% of that purchase goes directly to your team, if you are a general or social member or family member, it goes to the club or Junior section. The more you swipe, the more they can support your team plus you also get a nice discount. 

Teams will be paid out every two months from April onwards, the scheme starts as soon as you have your card.

Plus…Your card also entitles you to their VIP skip the queue privileges at all their venues. You can swipe your card at any of their seven great venues.

Pay your subs now and grab your personalized card and start enjoying the benefits and earning funds for your team.

Craig Calder

CFC Chairman

Junior Rugby

Last Sunday we held our first ‘Have a go’ session at the club, this was a fantastic turnout and great to see so many familiar faces, and also so many new faces.

Registrations are coming in thick and fast which is great, so don't forget to register your child if you haven't done so already.

We have some more ‘have a go’ sessions coming up for St Francis of Assisi School, and St Albans school. A reminder to keep an eye on Facebook for upcoming sessions at the club, these will include scrum clinics, tackle sessions, year 1 and 2 open day and more!

The most important date coming up is weigh in for year 3 - year 13 players, this will be held on Wednesday the 10th April from 3:30-7pm - mark this one in your diary.

If you have any questions please don't hesitate to ask at:  cfcjuniors@christchurchpark.co.nz 

Kōhine Development Training Programme

Our 5 week Kōhine Development training programme wrapped up this week, it was received with great success. It focused on developing our youth girls to give them the knowledge and skills they need to become better rugby players. 

Over 60 girls aged 13-18 from all over Christchurch attended 3 or more sessions, receiving first class training from some of the best Resource Coaches in Canterbury.  With a big focus on Women in front of girls all of our resource coaches were Female.

A massive thank you to our coaches who made time to come down and help out with this, Rebecca Todd, Angie Sisifa, Vicki Logopati-Campbell, Kendra Cocksedge, Kim Smith, Stephanie Te Ohaere-Fox, Amy Rule, Phillipa Love, Melissa Ruscoe, Yuki Paraki, Isabella Waterman, Kalesi Taga and Nina Poletti. It wouldn't have been a success without you all. Would also love to mention Jono Campbell who was a main driver around the strategy of this training programme, males supporting women in rugby is amazing and we really appreciate you. 

On top of specialist training in their specific positions, we were able to have a dietician Arna Mcleod come down to do a presentation on how to fuel their bodies with a balanced diet as athletes.

They also got to take away with them booklets, to write down key learnings and clear files loaded with information for prep to play, conditioning options and key stretches to make sure they look after their bodies over the season, on and off the field.Also a training t=-shirt to reward them for the hard work they have done over the 5 weeks.

As part of the program, we received feedback from the girls, comments included:

"I liked how we got specialist's in to teach us really important stuff."

"I enjoyed the friendly environment and how if somebody mucked up, they didn't feel stupid for it."

"I learned many things coming from a person who has never played before, especially in the scrum."

"I like the inclusiveness of the club."

Thank you to the Canterbury Rugby Union who helped resource this amazing initiative which was run by our club. 

100% of the girls indicated that they were going to play rugby this year and register for one or more of the available competitions. A significant number of the participants were new to rugby, and had come from schools or clubs where girls rugby is not an option.

We hope to run many more Programmes like this in the future to help up-skill our Kōhine coming through.

Please get in-touch with our RDO if you would like to join the club for girls/women's rugby with one of the best progressions through all the ages of rugby in the Canterbury region.

Stephanie Te Ohaere-Fox

0279325719

rugby@christchurchpark.co.nz

Thank you!  

We would like to say a big thank you to some of our representative players who have been kind enough to gift some gear back to the club for our junior and senior players in the form of boots, training kit and bags with some items being brand new.

Thanks to Tom Christie, Lucy Jenkins, Amy Du Plessis, and Rosie Kelly. As you can see your gear will be well used by our club members and we appreciate the thought of gifting back.

Book this Venue

If you are a business that is looking for a central conference venue or meeting space with full catering and motel units, Christchurch Football Club is the perfect place! Members discount available.

Please contact: Jen Muller 021 0222 7810

Article added: Wednesday 20 March 2024