Welcome to the Tignes Rugby Academy Diary. With one day to go until the 2017 programme kicks off, the operations team, led by Camp Manager Cory Brown, have been busy putting the final prep touches to Europe’s top underage residential rugby camp at the sunny Tignes Le Claret venue.
There’s nothing quite like a road trip to signal the start of the final camp countdown and Cory navigated his way down, with the rugby equipment, through England and France on the 1,296km, 14hr trip on Wednesday. The journey gave the Kiwi a great chance to listen to a range of podcasts, hopefully a few that prepared him for the series victory of the British & Irish Lions in NZ this weekend! The weather in France is and was glorious, with the land level 35 degrees celcius dipping to a perfect 25 degrees in the Alpine training venue.
Once on site, the focus has been on final set up of the UCPA venue, with management orientation, finalising the room allocations and layout, putting together the player packs (including the Impact Gumshields and UCPA player training t-shirts) and the final booking of the facilities & activities for week 1 of the programme. There was also another road trip to Geneva to collect our Multimedia intern Sean Hayes, who is heading up a marketing and social team push for the three weeks of the programme.
Saturday’s schedule will see the arrival of further staff, final deliveries and set up of the meeting & common room areas for the arrival of 49 week one players from early Sunday afternoon.
The excitement is peaking. Tignes Rugby Academy is on.
