A good rugby CV gets a coach to watch your footage and reply to your message. That coach has a pile of them and a few minutes, so one page is the right length. Our template fits on one page. Download it, fill it in, and use the guide below for each section.
- Download the rugby CV template in Word, which is the one to edit
- Download it as a PDF, to see how the finished page should look
It works for a move to a new team, a representative trial, a university scholarship or a place in an academy.
What goes on a rugby CV
The template has eight sections, in the order a coach looks for them.
Name, position and contact details
Put your name and your main position at the top, then your second position if you have one. A coach is usually filling a specific gap, so position is the first thing they look for. Add your phone number and email here too, so nobody has to hunt for them.
Your details
Date of birth, height, weight, current team and the level it plays at. If you kick goals, say which foot.
One line about you
This is the most useful line on the page. Say what kind of player you are in a single sentence:
- “Tighthead prop. Scrummages well, carries often, tackles a lot.”
- “Fly-half. Kicks well from hand and at goal, organises the attack.”
- “Winger. Fast, finishes tries, catches kicks well.”
If a coach only reads one line, this is the one that should make them read the rest.
Playing history
List your teams with the most recent first: team, level, seasons, matches started and position. Be exact about the level. Coaches can check, and “played at a high level” tells them nothing.
Your numbers
Pick three to five numbers that suit your position, and say how many matches they cover. “Averaged X tackles a match across 16 league games” is worth far more than “strong defender”.
- Front row: tackles, ruck arrivals and scrum penalties won. Hookers should add lineout throws.
- Locks: lineouts won, tackles and ruck arrivals
- Back row: tackles, turnovers won and carries
- 9 and 10: passes, kicks from hand and, if you take the goal kicks, your success rate
- Centres: carries, tackles and offloads
- Back three: tries, catches from kicks and carries
Only compare yourself with people in the same position. A flanker and a wing do different jobs, and the tackle counts by position or the offload counts show how far apart they sit. If your team runs fitness tests, add one recent result and date it.
Only use numbers you can back up. If you do not have any, leave the section short and let your footage do the work.
Highlights and a full match
Give two links: a short reel and one full match. The reel gets a coach interested, and the full match shows them what you do when the ball is elsewhere. How to build a rugby CV and highlights covers what goes in the reel.
Open both links in a private browser window before you send them. A link that asks for a password will not get opened.
Honours
Keep this to the things a coach will care about: representative selection, captaincy, player of the season and league or cup wins. Three or four lines is plenty.
References
Name two people, ideally your current coach and one before that, with a phone number and email for each. Ask them first, and tell them who might call.
What to leave out
- Every team you played for before you were 16
- Your work history, unless someone has asked for it
- Long paragraphs about how much rugby means to you
- Any number you could not back up if a coach asked
- A second page
How to send it
- Find the right person. On most team websites it is the head coach or the director of rugby.
- Save your CV as a PDF, with your name and position in the file name.
- Write three lines: who you are, why this team, and what you are asking for.
- Send it early. Teams often plan next season’s squad during this one, so do not wait for pre-season.
- Follow up once, a week or two later, then leave it.
Update your CV after each block of matches, so that your numbers stay current.
Let your matches fill it in
If your team uses Framesports, you do not have to work out the numbers by hand. Each player has a Rugby CV page in the app, with up to six stats worked out from their analysed matches and room for up to ten teams, ten references and ten highlight links. Copy those stats into this template and you have a CV to send. How highlight reels and rugby CVs work explains the rest.
Hero photo: Commander Keane, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
