HOW TO FIND PLAYERS FOR YOUR TEAM

Once your team is up and running you may lose players from time to time due to members of your squad becoming unavailable. The following article uses our 15 years + of experience to break down the best ways to find additional players for your team:

  1. Local Facebook groups – Each suburb, borough and town has multiple local Facebook groups with users often looking for fun, healthy and social activities nearby to them. We suggest posting a photo of your team and no more than a few sentences saying what a fun and friendly bunch you are!
  2. Interest based Facebook groups – Similar to the above, these groups feature people with something in common, and often cover a wider geographical area. Examples that work well for recruitment include “Aussies in”, Kiwis in” and “Irish in” groups. Basically people who may have moved to your area recently and are looking for fun new social activities.
  3. Women’s Facebook Groups – In recent years there has been a huge increase in women’s support type Facebook groups, based local to cities or areas. If your team is short on women, ask one of your female team mates to try recruiting in these groups. It’s likely you’ll have great success. Example groups include “Irish Dolls in London”
  4. Local Whatsapp Groups – Similar to Facebook groups, most suburbs, blocks of flats and even streets have a local Whatsapp group. If you are in groups local to your venue, you never know who might be looking for a new social activity.
  5. Post on your social media – If you and your teammates fill your Insta, Tiktok, Snapchat or even LinkedIn with great content from your team, your dm’s will be overflowing from prospective recruits in no time! You could even start an account for your team!
  6. Try your colleagues – Approach them directly or ask at work if you can get featured on the company’s intranet or newsletter.
  7. Uni or School friends – Whilst many teams start as individual teams put together by us, they often morph into a team of friends from way back, using Tag as the vehicle to catch-up each week.
  8. Post on the Gumtree sports partners page
  9. Tinder – Yes, this does work! Long running London team “The Right Swipes” were formed via Tinder and we’ve heard of other teams using it selectively as well!
  10. Get a Tattoo of your team – Ok, we don’t really recommend this one. But when researching this article we heard of a player in Yorkshire who has the name of their Tag team as a tattoo and a team in Bristol who have matching tattoos. We’re not sure if it’ll help with recruitment, but it’s certainly a conversation starter!

If your new recruits are unsure, either give them a trial game in your team, or even better direct them towards one of our official Free Taster Sessions, where they can get some basic coaching and a gentle introduction towards our sport and community.

Using Facebook Groups

Facebook groups are a very successful way to recruit players for your team.

To use Facebook groups

  1. Go to Facebook
  2. Search for location. Ie if your league is in Didsbury, try searching for Didsbury.
  3. Join the group (note there might be a lag whilst admin approves you joining

Once in the group, we suggest a post something like the following (you can no doubt make it more exciting!!!). Importantly make sure you include a photo of your team to give added social proof.

“Hi All,

I am looking for 1 man and 2 women to join our mixed Try Tag Rugby team. We play at Didsbury Sports Ground on Wednesday nights.

We are a very friendly team, who regularly socialise together each week after our game.

Tag Rugby is a fun and easy sport to learn, which is very safe to play. Most of us hadn’t played any form of Rugby before starting. We play at beginner-intermediate level and there are 20 teams in the league.

The current season goes from now until the end of June, and we play all year round.

If you’re interested in joining or have any questions, please reply below or drop me a DM.”

Official Try Tag Rugby Facebook Groups

You may be able to find additional players in our official Try Tag Rugby Facebook groups. This could be someone whose team has taken a break or is looking to play an additional night. Check out this list of Facebook groups.

Note some areas also have official or unofficial Whatsapp groups.

Please note however that the number of requests from players in these ringer type groups tends to exceed the number of players looking for a team. So you are far more likely to have success recruiting from outside of the existing community.

Officially Request Extra Players

Most importantly, if you are ever struggling to fill your team, please communicate this to us as we may be able to help. At times we may be able to allocate additional players to your team who have registered individually or are on our waiting lists. The more notice we can get of your request, the more likely we can help.

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