North Harbour Rugby Academy & Long Term Athlete Development

The North Harbour Rugby Academy’s ten year plan is based on Long Term Athlete Development (LTAD), which is a world class programme for developing the full sporting potential of talented young athletes, based on their individual growth rates.

It is the first fully integrated and comprehensive development programme of its kind available in New Zealand. Not only in rugby union but in sport overall, thus creating a national leading edge for the North Harbour Rugby Academy and North Harbour Rugby Union. This will be further enhanced, given North Harbour’s strong tradition as one of New Zealand’s hot-beds of talented, young rugby players.

Now recognised world-wide as being essential to producing elite athletes in all sports, the major sporting nations are increasingly adopting this programme as the foundation of their talent identification and development systems. The latest example of the success this type of programme can bring is Maria Sharapova, Wimbledon ladies’ tennis champion at the age of 17. She moved to the Bolliteri Tennis Academy in Florida, which follows a similar LTAD Programme, at the age of 9.

The RFU in England, along with several other major sports in the UK, fully adopted an LTAD Programme for their Regional Rugby Academies in 2001.  

The North Harbour Rugby Academy’s ten year plan is based on the same LTAD principles, of which key components are the Fundamentals, Learn to Train, Train to Train, Train to Compete and Train to Win Stages. It allows outstandingly talented, young rugby players to learn and develop to become outstanding young athletes as well, in the quest to achieve and maximise their full potential as an elite rugby player for North Harbour and beyond.  

North Harbour are 100% focused on their future, where they stand now and where they will be in 5 years time on the field and off it.