Wellbeing Wednesday: Connection is key for young players

Pine Central Holy Spirit Hornets know the importance of connection for their young players.

Just as they work hard to get everything right for their players on the field, the club also works hard to look after the wellbeing of their players off the field.

Pine Central vice-president and female development officer Ana Fotu said the club often looked for ways to educate their kids on numerous topics, especially around state of mind, connecting with people they trust, and balancing their responsibilities in life.

With the rise in technology and social media use - especially with teenagers - Fotu said the club wanted to do what they could to get the kids away from screens and remind them of the importance of being happy, healthy, active and balanced.

Last year the club hosted former Gold Coast Titan Clinton Toopi for an internal development program and former Brisbane Broncos forward Sam Tagataese for an NRL State of Mind presentation.

Both were aimed at their under 12 to under 18 players and gave the young players the opportunity to connect with role models and those who have played at the elite level.

And on March 25 of this year, the club’s under 16 girls were given the opportunity to meet with the Newcastle Knights NRLW team, which included a targeted conversation around wellbeing.

“Through Neta (Annetta Nu’uausala) we were able to take our under 16s girls to meet some of the team on the Friday night during their dinner session,” Fotu said.

“We were able to ask a couple of questions from them… questions about how the players have handled not being selected in a team, balancing sports with work and education, state of mind and how to deal with depression.

“The women were amazing. Georgia Page in particular was quite vocal and spoke a lot about how to balance sports and education. There were discussions about time management and priorities.

“With the questions about state of mind and how a lot of the (Newcastle) girls have come from New Zealand and are away from family, they spoke about how it’s okay to have a good cry, to reach out to like-minded people or people you trust. They said that’s what teammates are for.

“The intention behind it was just to meet up with people that our girls are aspiring to be like. We did mention to the girls that hopefully they’ll be on the other side where the NRLW girls are one day.

“They were very inspired.”

QRL South East wellbeing operations manager Dayne Weston said it was important for all rugby league clubs to connect with the community around them, such as Pine Central continue to do.

He said the QRL's wellbeing team continually discussed the importance of connection, especially in finding the right people to talk to when things maybe aren’t going well.

“It’s extremely important to stay connected and continue to grow and learn from other people,” Weston said.

“It’s important to learn how other people do things and how that can benefit our community clubs and players.

“One of the biggest things we want to do is get young people talking more. By sharing an issue, it gets halved straight away because people are there to help.

“We’re always encouraging people to talk, to find others they are comfortable with and to have that safe environment.”