There is less than a month left in the 2024 season. Most of younger classes will finish the season on 23 March and the end-of-year BBQ, but for some classes, due to match schedules, there will also be a practice on 30 March.
The start date for the 2025 season is Sunday 13th April, but Shogun will start on Sunday 6th April due to the international exchange match with Melbourne Grammar School, and the Colts will start on Sunday 6th April due to tournament preparations.
On Saturday 22nd February, the ‘SIRC Girls’ Rugby Festival’ was held at the BST Nagasawa Sports Ground, and over 100 girls gathered. Former Japanese women’s national team players Aimi Inoue and Makiko Tomita participated as special guests to provide coaching.
Thank you very much to the Reds coaches and support members who were in charge of everything from the preparations to the running of the event.
Two of our club members, Reiko Kabasawa (2nd year junior high school student) and Chisato Minamizuka (1st year junior high school student), have been selected to represent Tokyo in the girls’ section of the East Japan U15 Junior High School Tournament, which will be held at K’s Denki Stadium in Mito City from 8th to 9th March. Congratulations to them, and we wish them the best of luck!
From April, a new U9-10 (same grade as Junior Samurai) class will start at the Azabudai Campus. The head coach will be Locky. At first, only U9 (new 3rd graders) will start, but this class is expected to grow in the future, including joint practices with Junior Samurai. Details will be introduced to members by email at a later date.
On Sunday 2nd March, an online meeting was held with the head coaches in the lead. This meeting, called the SIRC Leadership Committee (SLC), was newly established with the aim of having the head coaches and other leaders regularly assess the current situation at SIRC, and to resolve issues and raise questions.
At the beginning President Norman gave a speech in which he stated that ‘as SIRC grows year by year, it is important to reaffirm the values and direction that lie at the heart of SIRC and to make efforts to maintain them’, and he clearly stated the policy of ‘SIRC as One Team and One for All’. The following is the basic founding philosophy of SIRC, which is also written on the SIRC website.
‘Make friends all over the world through rugby’ is the motto of the Shibuya International Rugby Club (SIRC), which was established in 2017. We uphold the following three values
SIRC started with only 15 members in the autumn of 2017, but as of March this year, the number of members has increased to 367. One of the reasons for the increase in membership is the Azabudai classes that were opened last year, and the increase in members in the Colts (currently 67 members) by high school students is also remarkable.
At present, there are 11 classes for children from 4 years old to high school students, held simultaneously on Sunday mornings at both Showa and Azabudai, making it one of the largest clubs in Japan to cover such a wide age range.
On the other hand, the proportion of Japanese families in the younger classes has increased, and in some classes, the ‘experience of playing rugby in English’, which is a feature of international clubs, is becoming less common. We would like to go back to basics and review our activities from the new term in this area as well.
SIRC is an activity under the umbrella of BST. SIRC has a partnership with the British School in Tokyo (BST) and is part of the school’s extracurricular activities club. As it is recognised as an international sports club, activities are conducted mainly in English.
The basic format that has been used for SIRC classes so far is as follows