Seren C.

CGA Player Residency: 2026, 12-Week Residency

Rugby Affiliation: Sale Sharks

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Playing Her Own Game

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Seren Coombs grew up playing her rugby on Jersey in the Channel Islands before earning a place with London Irish Ladies. She arrived at the Crusaders Global Player Residency in Christchurch looking for an environment built around her as an individual athlete rather than a one-size-fits-all program, somewhere she would be pushed to set her own goals and held to them.

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That is exactly what she found. Training at Rugby Park put her through daily unit sessions in the lineout and scrum, a repeated pass-catch drill that opened every training day, and a strength and conditioning program that asked more of her physically than she had experienced before. Living and training alongside players from all over the world, in a group that was overwhelmingly male, gave her a firsthand look at what a genuine high-performance environment feels like day to day.

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Building a Player Who Trusts Her Own Voice

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Ownership on the Training Pitch

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What changed Seren's game was not one single session but the accumulation of small, repeated pieces of work. The lineout and scrum unit sessions helped her grow as a player in ways she could feel over time, and the same basic pass-catch drill, run at the start of every single session, quietly rebuilt her hands even on days when it felt like she was dropping everything. What surprised her most was how personal the program made her development. She and her coaches set her goals together in one-to-ones, but from there the responsibility to chase them sat with her. If she did not push herself, no one was going to push her for her.

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Bringing the Crusaders Way Home

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Seren found the biggest contrast between Crusaders rugby and the game she grew up with in the coaching style and in the mix of players around her, drawn from rugby cultures all over the world and taught to play one way. That way centres on fast, free-flowing rugby: looking for space and moving the ball rather than carrying it into contact, a instinct she contrasts with the English game's comfort with taking the ball into traffic. It is a style she plans to bring straight back to London Irish Ladies, alongside the passing primers her own program does not currently run. In the gym, she felt pushed by her strength and conditioning coach to lift heavier than she thought she could, and on the field, coach Grant Keenan's approach stuck with her just as much: focusing on one detail in her tackle technique and repeating it, even on her off days, until it improved. Between the two, she says it was exactly the kind of tailored push her game needed.

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Growing Up as an Athlete

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Training as one of six girls among forty-five boys was, in Seren's words, genuinely tough at times, and she is candid that any girl considering the program should go in with her eyes open about that mental challenge. But she credits that environment with a real shift in her mental toughness, one she expects to lean on next year as she balances university study with high-level rugby. She has learned to switch off fully during downtime rather than staying "on" all the time, and to take in feedback from every direction while still trusting what she knows about her own game and her own body. She has also found more of a voice within the group, moving from someone quieter by circumstance to someone with real input and a leadership presence that has nothing to do with being the biggest player on the field. She left convinced there is real potential for the women's side of the program to grow, and that more girls coming through will make the experience better for everyone involved.