Running a Gala Day
Gala days are a great way to promote Rugby through your school or community. There are a number of components that combine to generate a successful gala day. Here are 3 key components for running a successful gala day.
Duty of Care
Duty of care is simply the elimination of any risk towards the participants. All aspects of the Gala day have to be take into consideration, from arrival to completion. The best way to analyse risk is to visualise the events unfolding as you would like them to, as you do this write it down and then take measures to make it happen. Think of anything that could go wrong and take measures to reduce the chances of that happening.
- for example, players arriving safely to the fields from a bus stop might mean you have to create a bus stop near the field. You then have to notify the schools and buses participating in the Gala day of the bus stop location. Signs and directions can be added and even a map showing the route they must take.
When dealing with physical obstacles it is often easier to simply move the allocated field space away from danger, or reduce the field size to accommodate a buffer zone. some examples of physical obstacles include goal posts, pot holes, fences.
Activity Continuity
Continuity is the key for a smooth Gala day. Each activity should run to time and have enough buffer space to allow for any unexpected issues. The best way to do this is to follow the following formula;
- Break the entire day down into minutes - 6 hours is actually 360 minutes
- Establish the formal events of the day, e.g. Welcome and rule clarification, lunch etc.
- Deduct the formal events and any other events from the overall time allocation
- Tally up the number of teams competing
- Set your competition structure around the number of teams and time available (allowing for 5 minute gaps between games/stations), for example if you have 8 teams competing in a 7 aside tournament with a game duration of 14 minutes (2 halves of 7 minutes) and time available is 270 minutes, you would be able to play approximately 19 games.
- Decide on a finals structure. Remember the finals will take away games from your pool games so establish what is more important the finals or a team plays all structure. From here you can deduct the number of games from the 19 games. For example if you only take the 4 top teams then you will only loose 3 games from the grand tally (1 plays 4, 2 plays 3 and winners play each other)
Results Centre
This is crucial to the success of the event, results need to be tallied quickly and people need to know the results asap. In order to reduce the number of interruptions to the result tabulators it is wise to situate a results board next to the result centre and create an area for result to be dropped off. The results board should show the following
- A draw of all games for the tournament and a day schedule including all events outside of the games
- A map of the field locations and numbers
- All the tournament rules for the day
- Up to date results from all the completed games
We hope these 3 tips will help you in your development of a Gala day at your school or club.