Welcome to the International Rugby Academy of New Zealand (IRANZ), the world’s first truly international rugby academy.
What is IRANZ?
With the growth of professionalism in rugby there is a real demand for quality rugby education. Rugby has also expanded rapidly over the last few years and is now a truly global sport.
IRANZ courses are specifically designed to assist in progressing or achieving a career in playing or coaching rugby, and more importantly, to achieve excellence in this area.
Now into its eighth year of operation, IRANZ has had players and coaches sent to its courses from the following unions: New Zealand, South Africa, England, Australia, Scotland, USA, Fiji, Korea, the majority of English premiership academies, Japanese company teams as well as New Zealand provincial unions—all in all, players and coaches from 29 different countries.
The Purpose of the Academy
IRANZ is the world’s first truly international rugby academy.
The International Rugby Academy provides inspiration and an independent high performance avenue for promising players and coaches from around the world. We foster an internal culture of creativity and innovation that creates a leading edge learning environment for the global rugby fraternity.
Our aim is to lay a solid foundation to prepare players and coaches for the uncompromising world of professional rugby.
We provide the ultimate ‘fast track’ to ensure the players and coaches have every chance of making a successful career out of rugby.
For players there is a high degree of focus on position specific, mental toughness, rugby intelligence and skill development.
For coaches it is a rare opportunity to work intensively with the world’s best coaches in a practical environment developing a structure and blueprint they can take home and use with their own team.
Our alliance with the New Zealand Rugby Union allows us to use the best and most current coaches available. The coaching staff at IRANZ represent some of the most influential players and coaches in world rugby in recent times.
Position Specific and Specialist Coaching
On all IRANZ courses serious emphasis is placed on position specific coaching. We have had an impressive lineup of former and current international coaches and players involved on one or more courses over the past five years including:
Course Tutors: Brian Ashton, Nick Mallett, Wayne Smith, Steve Hansen, Graham Henry, Tony Gilbert, Eddie Jones, David Nucifora, John Boe, Grant Fox, Sir Brian Lochore, Peter Thorburn, Nick Farr-Jones, John Eales, Mike Cron, Mick Byrne, Laurie Mains, Colin Cooper, Jim Telfer, Chris Boyd, Dennis Brown, John Kirwan, Ian Foster, Andre Bell
Position Specific Specialists: Sean Fitzpatrick, Paul Mitchell, Bruce Hemara, Richard Loe, Craig Dowd, Bull Allen, Greg Feek, Ian Jones, John Eales, Todd Blackadder, Keith Robinson, Steve Gordon, Mike Voyle, Jamie Joseph, Josh Kronfeld, Justin Marshall, Pat Lam, Liam Barry, Graham Mourie, Arran Pene, Scott Robertson, Murray Mexted, Nick Farr-Jones, Dave Loveridge, Stu Forster, Graeme Bachop, Jon Preston, Grant Fox, Andre Bell, Bernie McCahill, Dave Rennie, Scott McLeod, Tim Horan, Frank Bunce, Jeff Wilson, Marc Ellis, Eroni Clarke, Shane Howarth, Allan Hewson, David Campese, Christian Cullen
IRANZ provides coaches and young rugby players a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to analyse their role and position with these experts. The position specific coaches not only work with the players one-on-one, but watch them play in matches against local competition and analyse their performance and style during trainings, match play and afterwards.