Former Western Force Women’s coach Sebastian Delport will move into the role of Head of Ladies Pathway taking charge of the Future Force Ladies academy system.
With the Future Force Ladies program well underway RugbyWA went on the hunt for strong leadership to boost the WA pathway in Women’s rugby.
The Future Force Ladies program is set designed to better prepare our high performance athletes for the professional rugby stage on and off the field.
Now with the alignment of the Future Force Ladies program and the Emerging Girls program Delport will oversee the entire women’s pathway with the major goal of pushing his players to Super W and Wallaroo selections.
Emerging out of the recent RugbyWA Women’s Super W squad many athletes have now been considered for Wallaroos prospects and have been added to Rugby Australia's player of national interest list and will be closely looked at by Delport in combination with our high performance coach Steve Anderson as well as Wallaroos head coach Dwayne Nestor.
With many of these girls being young athletes the academy program is geared to ease the transition into the national squad.
Seb Delport is no stranger to Women’s Rugby serving as Women’s Head Development Coach at Bristol Rugby Club in 2015 and 16 before heading west.
Delport worked with the Western Force Women in 2017, he led the team to a successful third place finish in the inaugural Super W competition in the role of head coach.
Consistent with RugbyWA, Delport's view is that a two tier academy system is crucial to the betterment of the already successful Women's rugby pathway in Western Australia.
"With my experience coming out of the inaugural Super W campaign I'm really looking forward to working with the same group of players and developing the pathway that sits underneath them so we can ensure sustainable success looking into the future."
"The work we will be doing will come out of RugbyWA's overall High Performance plan that we finalized earlier this year all of the work we do will be captured in that plan, my major role will be to ensure the transition to this new academy system is as seamless as possible for our athletes."
"There is a lot of promise with the group of athletes we have, we've don't have the biggest playing pool by any means but the potential within that playing pool is very impressive and my role combined with the rest of the RugbyWA high performance coaching panel is to give these players the best environment and the best opportunities to succeed within our pathway."
"There is strong improvement in Women's Rugby across the board, we've had two seasons now of the Super W competition and having an academy program to vacillate athletes into that competition is essential for state and national success."
RugbyWA have three athletes that currently sit within our Future Force Ladies program;
Taylor Waterson
Zakiya Kereopa
Zion Taurima
Our emerging girls for 2019 are still yet to be selected with Delport having a lot of involvement in that process.
