On-Line Registration on its way

30 plus hard-working North Harbour rugby club volunteers along with some representatives from other sports codes on the Shore gave up watching the BlackCaps destroy Australia at the Garden of Eden to attend a workshop run by Sportsground staff at QBE Stadium on Wednesday night 3 February. The original Sportsground website vehicle has been updated to a new product called “Sporty”.  The new Sporty product boasts many improvements on the previous tool.  Like Sportsground, Sporty hosts the On-Line Registration Database under contract to NZ Rugby and is linked to the NZ Rugby National Rugby Database.  NZ Rugby is pushing to manage all registrations on-line over the next couple of years and the workshop demonstrated to the North Harbour volunteers how that can be achieved.  Currently four junior clubs and a couple of schools manage registrations on line in North Harbour and it is anticipated by the season end that number will be considerably increased.

So what does that mean to you the senior player or, the parent of a junior player?

If you played rugby in North Harbour in 2015, over the next month or two you should receive an email from your club or school rugby administrator that provides a unique link to your individual data in the National Rugby Database which you can update, answer any rugby related questions from your club or school and submit your registration for 2016. The email should also advise season information and key dates and in particular for juniors, registration nights for weigh-in.  If you or your child didn’t play rugby in 2015 and is keen to play in 2016 or you didn’t play for a North Harbour club and school you can go to your club or school website and click on a link to register on-line.   Players will be able to register online through any device from a PC to a tablet or even a smartphone.  This process will remove the need for completing a paper registration form.  Currently NZ Rugby produces 160,000 paper forms placed in over 1000 registration packs for distribution to all clubs and schools across New Zealand and it is anticipated that there will be a considerable saving in two to three years as registration is managed on-line, and several trees will be saved.  On-line registration presents some challenges around changing registration processes particularly for junior weigh-ins and team allocation but it is not insurmountable and there are several clubs and schools across NZ managing registration, subscription payment, paying for photos, playing kit purchases on-line.

If you have any queries, please contact Denis Henderson, Club and School Liaison Officer on 4472106 or [email protected].