I haven’t been getting much sleep lately. But I doubt anyone else in rugby league is either, thanks to this year’s World Cup.
It’s like Christmas come early. And the highlight for me has been the Wheelchair Rugby League World Cup.
I stayed up late on several occasions to watch the Australian Wheelaroos in action, especially with my own personal connection to the Queenslanders in the side – particularly the four blokes from Townsville in Peter Arbuckle, Bayley McKenna, Zac Schumacher and Adam Tannock.
I’ve witnessed the journey they’ve been on to get to the World Cup – the training, the games, the trials.
And while they may have been knocked out of the semi-finals by the French, to see them on the world stage was special.
The Queensland boys certainly held their own.
To me it epitomises a lot of what I’m trying to achieve in my role as the Queensland Rugby League’s state strategy manager.
The Wheelchair Rugby League World Cup showcases there are real opportunities in inclusivity within our game and that’s something I’ve been striving to highlight over the past 12 months as well for our organisation.
I am one year down in the job and I will say, doing something different after doing a certain job for 12 years is always really challenging but I’ve enjoyed the experience.
I’ve learnt so much about the organisation and where we can go and hopefully I’m part of that process to make that change.
This year has been about learning and understanding and then working on our game plans around the female space, infrastructure, development in our regional and remote areas, volunteers, inclusivity, and more.
All of these will start to come out from early 2023 and with that we’ll have really clear guidelines around where we’re heading in the future.
I believe it’s the most strategic our game has been in the time I have worked in it.
There’s so many good things coming and they’re just about ready to go.
The QRL has made some really good internal appointments in recent times too, with Linda Saunders, our operations coordinator, and Liberty Jones, our social impact and inclusion coordinator.
They are going to be real champions for our game and will help drive some of our programs, initiatives and strategies.
Something we are also about to do as a whole organisation is a cultural awareness survey.
This will help us internally understand the level of cultural awareness across our workforce, which will then help us to develop education programs on different cultures proudly involved in our game.
It’s a deeper dive into learning and understanding the cultures that all come together to make our great game what it is.
And finally, our Corporate Social Responsibility Committee is also starting to shift focus to 2023.
The committee has worked really hard with our clubs and leagues this year to roll out social impact programs across Queensland and next year we will have a continued focus on some of those areas, particularly health and wellbeing and Indigenous programs.
We’ve done some great work in that space but we’re now going to channel our focus into three or four main activations.
Next year is already shaping up to be a promising one.
