The forum brings together all areas of rugby within Dundee, meeting 3 times a year. The forum, chaired by the Rugby Development Officer stimulates communication between school and club environments with the objective being to create solid, sustainable links for the advancement of rugby.

New image rugby is a fast, skilful, non-contact version of rugby, which enables boys, and girls of any ability to play rugby together.

These schools come together at the end of their training to play in Dundee New Image Rugby Festival with one lucky school progressing to the National Finals at Murrayfield.

New Image, Tag Rugby and full contact rugby can all be on offer at secondary school with teams made up of boys and girls, with the exception of full contact game where boys and girls compete in their own groups.

Teams play initially against teams from within Dundee but with more experience will travel further afield to play other schools.

This programme is co-ordinated by the SRU development officers and brings together the best club players at U15, U16, U17 & U18 in area teams. These players gather for two training sessions and a game within the last full week of each month. The team that represents our area is the “Tayside Tigers”.

The best players who demonstrate high playing standards are identified and invited to be part of the Rugby Academy. The Academy is funded through the Sport Scotland Talented Athlete programme and is administered via SportTayside who look after the performance areas of sport in Tayside.

This body deals with players who have been identified by national coaches and who are currently part of a national squad (17–21 yrs). TFIS look after many aspects of the athlete, the main one being Strength and Conditioning, along with a monitoring system ensuring a high quality programme, to what are the future Scottish professional rugby players.