The short answer
Recruit before people have chosen a club, not when you are already short. Show the whole club, the rugby and the social side, and make posters that can be forwarded on WhatsApp without a caption. Then make it easy to turn up: one training night, one time, one person to ask for.
Timing is most of it
Most clubs start rugby club recruitment when they are already short of numbers. By then, the people who were thinking about rugby have already joined somewhere else. Recruitment works when it goes out before a season or a second half of a season starts, while people are still deciding.
If your club needs players after Christmas, the posts go out now.
Show the rugby and the rest of it
People do not join a club only for the rugby. They join for the friends, the fitness and the Saturday nights. Recruitment that only shows tackles and lineouts misses most of the reasons people stay.
The Valkyries recruitment campaign we made for Daventry RFC ran as two posters: one for the rugby, one for the rest of it. Fun, fitness, friendship.
Build it to be forwarded
The most effective recruitment channel at most grassroots clubs is not Instagram. It is existing players forwarding a poster to a friend on WhatsApp. So the poster has to work on its own, with no caption: what it is, who it is for, when and where to turn up.
Make the first step tiny
- One training night to come to, with a time and a place.
- One named person to ask for on arrival.
- A clear line that no experience is needed, if that is true.
Recruit volunteers the same way
Everything above works for volunteers too. Name the job, keep it small, and show who they would be working with. A club that tells its story properly finds its own players and its own volunteers.
Questions clubs ask
When should a rugby club start recruiting new players?
Before people have chosen a club: in the weeks before pre-season and again before the second half of the season. Recruitment posted after a club is already short usually comes too late.
What should a rugby recruitment poster include?
Who it is for, the training night, time and place, who to ask for, and whether experience is needed. It should make sense when forwarded on its own with no caption.
Does social media actually help recruit players?
Yes, especially when existing players share it into their own groups. The posts that recruit best are ones people want to forward to a friend.