As we commence the 2016 community rugby season, I believe the ORFU is now in a position to provide an improved level of support to all our clubs, schools and volunteers.
This follows a review involving stakeholders, staff and board of the union's rugby delivery programme.
The key outcomes that were identified from the review were: a need to focus on coach development and retention, to provide more support to clubs and schools with their internal capability, and also to improve player retention levels.
This has resulted in a new organisational structure and the recent appointment of four new positions within the ORFU.
Our head coach, Cory Brown, has also accepted additional responsibilities as the director of coaching and will lead our coach development programme.
Jason Macdonald and Seilala Mapusua will be responsible for delivering our coaching courses and other coach support services, including mentoring, observations and one-on-one sessions.
Simon Wallace has been appointed club and schools liaison officer and will assist clubs and schools with developing their internal systems and procedures.
This will include assisting with the development of: position descriptions for volunteer roles, strategies for coach and player recruitment, and strategic and funding planning.
The timing of New Zealand Rugby's funding review of provincial unions has been critical to allowing the ORFU to invest into these new roles.
However, it is important that we also look to grow our other areas of revenue and this has resulted in the appointment of Matt McLennan to our commercial team.
At present we have 24 players contracted for the inaugural Mitre 10 Cup competition scheduled to start in August.
This means another five or six players will be contracted from our club rugby competition, an exciting time for those players that have a strong club season.
Alongside this, having 15 of our already contracted players involved in Super rugby bodes well for Otago having a strong squad for this year's competition.
Our community rugby team has asked me to briefly outline the rationale for the 3pm kick-off time for premier games.
This was introduced to give our referees travel time between officiating at earlier games and being assistant referees at premier games.
This assists in allocating experienced match officials more effectively across a larger number of games.
The metropolitan match subcommittee will review the 3pm time at the end of the first round.
It is always good to get out and watch club rugby and last Saturday I watched one of the most exciting premier games I have seen for a while at Miller Park where a spirited Green Island team finished strongly against a hard-running Alhambra-Union side.
While the rugby was entertaining, it was great to see the number of people getting out and supporting rugby on a Saturday afternoon.
To also witness the junior prizegiving afterwards and the interaction between our junior and senior players, to me, is what the community game is all about!
