A short summary of the coaching staff and their achievements.

Head Coach: Riaan van der Merwe
Assistant Coach/Technical Advisor: Konrad Lotter
Assistant Coach/Forwards: Casper van der Walt

Riaan is a level III qualified coach, who started coaching with the Tukkies Women's team as assistant coach in 2003. While practically coaching and gaining experience, Riaan completed the various coaching course levels. Under his coaching the Tukkies Women's team achieved various amazing feats and the Tukkies Women's side have become one of the most talked about club teams in world rugby, competing in international tournaments and on par with teams that competed in the 2009 Sevens World Cup event. As a student of the game Riaan continuously adapts patterns and styles of play so that the newest and most advanced techniques are utilised to gain the upper hand on opposition.

Riaan was joined in 2007 by Konrad Lotter, as technical advisor and as assistant coach (forwards). With time he developed the various areas of his coaching to benefit the team on a skills and strategic level. Konrad's areas of expertise include the following:

• Scrums
• Loose forward combinations and deployment in various defensive patterns
• Defensive systems and patterns
• Scrumhalf skills and decision making
• Flyhalf skills and decision making
• Kicking coach

The coaching team of Riaan and Konrad also implemented a number of innovative ideas, that are currently being used by some international sides in the seven a side format of the game at the top level. The strength of this particular coaching team is the fact that they continuously analyse and improve their team by adapting the style and patterns of play to suit the players they have available. Through this adaptability, they ensured that Tukkies Women's rugby stayed a world power despite the loss of some top level back-line players. While the focus shifted more towards the forwards, due to the loss of the back-line players through retirement, they were able to maintain the high level of competitiveness. Tukkies are therefore still able to compete effectively at a national and international level.

In 2008 Riaan and Konrad was joined by Casper van der Walt.
Casper has a level II coaching qualification and also completed the level I refereeing qualification. He also attended various seminars during 2007 and 2008, presented by various provincial and international coaches and players. These seminars included aspects related to scums, back-line and general play.) Casper has extensive experience, specifically at age group level. He started at the junior level, coaching under-6, 7 and 8 from 1998 to 2004. From 2002 to 2007, he coached from under-9 to under-15 age groups at the youth club. He also coached the following invitational provincial teams at age group level, Under-13 Blue Bulls invitational (2003), Under-14 Blue Bulls invitational (2004), Under-15 Blue Bulls invitational (2005) and the representative under-13 Blue Bulls team in 2006. He has also been involved with the Blue Bulls women's team as assistant coach (forwards) from 2008 anwards.


Recent Achievements:

In the 15 a side format of the game, Tukkies beat a number of provincial teams in the past three years, with scores of 62-0, 69-0, 28-0, 48-7 and 33-7.

Tukkies competed successfully at the Nelson Mandela Bay Sevens, under the Blue Bulls name nearly causing an upset against the Uganda national squad that competed at the World Cup. At this tournament the "Blue Bulls" was the only team able to score against the Springbok Women's team in their loss of 33-19 against the national side (World Cup semi-finalists). Only the New Zealand national side have score more points against the Springboks in their World Cup encounter...)

Tukkies assisted with the preparation of the Russian national squad, where a weakened Tukkies side (due to Springbok duties and injuries to key players), competed with relative success against the Russian World Cup side, losing 15-10 and 12-5 respectively.

Tukkies also competed successfully at the annual Reunion sevens, beating the national squads of Reunion (15-5), Mayotte (55-0) and Madagascar (10-0), only losing in the final to France 19-7, after a score of 7-7 at half-time.

Tukkies also performed exceptionally well at the 2009 Dubai Women's Invitational event. During the pool stages, Tukkies finished second in their pool ahead of the USA and France and Thailand and went on to beat the national squad of the Arabian Gulf in the quarter final, before losing to the eventual tournament winners France in the semi-final.