Louise Dalgliesh earned 67 caps for Scotland as a player while she was part of the Japan coaching team at the last Women’s Rugby World Cup in New Zealand, so there are few people more qualified to run the rule over Saturday’s intriguing WXV 2 clash between the nations than her.
That’s even more so the case when you find out that Dalgliesh, who is now a member of the Sale Sharks coaching team, has just returned from Cape Town a few days ago and took in the first round of WXV 2 matches in the DHL Stadium.
She was in South Africa last week and into the start of this to deliver and facilitate sessions around the Gallagher High Performance Academy coaching internship programme.
As a result, she was working closely with the likes of Claire Cruikshank (Scotland), Yoko Suzuki (Japan), Gill Bourke (Australia) and Catrina Nicholas-McLaughlin (Wales) as well as Michela Merlo (Italy) who is not out there, but has been taking part in things remotely.
“We had a full-day workshop last Monday with the interns prior to any matches being played and then we had a half-day follow-up on Monday just gone following the first round of WXV 2 matches,” Dalgliesh said.
“The interns are now staying with their respective countries until the end of the WXV competition next weekend and it was really good to catch up with them and go through the workshops and talk through various things.
“I have always been interested in coaching and trying to help other female coaches and that only intensified a few years ago when I took part in World Rugby high performance coaching programmes for women myself.
“Carol Isherwood was involved at the time and she was keen to try and take those programmes to more female coaches and wanted to try and reach coaches in countries who maybe had not had those opportunities before.
“She wanted to know if anyone was keen to help facilitate this roll out of the programme and I said I was and things kind of just went from that point.
“I started helping with a lot of the online programmes that were being offered to people and that has led to me getting involved in various things to help deliver these courses and has allowed me to connect with some fascinating people and grow my own coaching knowledge as a result too.
“Last year I was lucky enough to go to Dubai to help deliver the face-to-face part of the High Performance Academy coaching internship programme and now with Gallagher coming on board as a supporter the programme will hopefully keep growing it and give more and more female coaches the opportunity to gain exposure working with national teams as that is something I am very passionate about.”
