Tuesday's Speaker
Richard Kinley, general manager at the Otago Rugby Football Union was at the club on Tuesday to give us a talk on the role he has played in recent years at the ORFU.
Richard is no stranger to Rotary, having done RYLA courses and worked alongside rotarians for previous projects.
Richard, from Gore, worked for PGG Wrightson and was a self proclaimed 'Townie in a rural area'. He was heavily involved in sports, mainly athletics and football but later rugby as well. He was a great sprinter and competed in several of the races around the Octagon, being a winner on one occasion.
Richard went on to work for Sport Otago. Here he enjoyed setting up regional offices and the sport activator programme
which helped train teachers at schools. When Richard finished at Sport Otago he was the Programme Director.
While working as the Programme Director for Sport Otago it was strongly recommended that he take the vacant position of General Manager at the ORFU. At the time this was not an attractive undertaking with the ORFU being in financial difficulty. None the less he went and did the job!
There was a lot of restructuring to do and a big focus on coaches. They had to re-connect with people involved with the game, implement a new strategic plan and have a rugby delivery review as well as looking at retention of senior members who have the experience.
Richard and the team rolled up their sleeves and kitted out a new gym at the stadium on a budget. In the first year of Richard being there they had repaid $270k of their debt.
Richard is a great speaker and it was a very entertaining talk. Here is a link to the Promotional video for the Otago Rugby International Programme:
Also, here is the link to the ORFU website: