Rugby Canada and NFP career pathway program allows players to work and build up real-world experience

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As one of the best players in a global game such as rugby, Sophie de Goede is no stranger to criss-crossing the planet in pursuit of an oval-shaped ball. From her hometown of Victoria, her talents have taken her as far away as New Zealand, where she captained Canada during the 2022 Women’s World Cup, or to her second home in London, where she plays for Saracens Women.

But with 2024 being an Olympic year, de Goede is racking up more air miles than usual. She has joined the Canadian sevens squad as she builds up experience ahead of Paris, playing tournaments in Vancouver, Los Angeles and Hong Kong.

However, with the salary cap in the England’s Allianz Premier 15s just £190,000 ($325,000) per club, most female players are unable to rely on their sporting talents to pay the bills. Many have to seek out additional employment, although it can be a struggle to find employers that are willing to embrace the kind of remote work a nomadic player such as de Goede needs, let alone allow the kind of flexibility that she requires to balance work with her rugby commitments.

Sensing an opportunity for a different kind of collaboration, global insurance company NFP – one of Rugby Canada’s principal sponsors – stepped forward with the Career Pathway Program. The initiative, which started last fall, enables Canada’s women’s players to work around their sporting schedules, allowing them to lean on their school studies to earn a regular paycheque while building up real-world experience that could possibly translate to a steady post-playing career.

De Goede, who got her degree in commerce from Queen’s University, is working in NFP’s management-cyber and professional-liabilities team as an associate broker.

“Sometimes I’m in London, England, sometimes I’m in Victoria, B.C., sometimes I’m in Hong Kong,” she says. “[NFP is] very willing to work across time zones to allow me to work asynchronously, invite me to all the meetings but only come if it works and if I can. They’re happy to work around my training schedule.”

The 24-year-old, who is back with the national 15s team for the Pacific Four Series, is currently in Sydney as Canada prepares to face Australia this Saturday. Canada won its first match in the four-team tournament, with de Goede scoring two tries in a 50-7 win over the United States two weeks ago.

She estimates that she probably puts in 20 to 25 hours a week for NFP, working across time zones and training schedules. But as someone who always wants to be busy, she appreciates the opportunity to build toward something off the pitch, too.

“I think this is a really good model for sponsorship and partnership for women’s sports teams, because we’re not often going to make the money in our careers, whether we make enough to support us at the current time but certainly not likely for most athletes to support us in the long term,” de Goede says.

“So I think it’s really good to get some work experience and set us up for success, post-athletic career.”

The Career Pathway Program grew out of a post-match conversation around benefits between de Goede’s mother and Scott Saddington, NFP’s managing director of complex risk and national property and casualty strategy. As Saddington explains, many of Canada’s national team players are not fully employed because of rugby commitments, and therefore don’t accrue the minimum of 24 hours a week that most benefits plans require.

The concept extended beyond simply providing access to medicines and physios, with the idea developing to offer formal work experience to two national team players for the first year. De Goede and Canadian teammate Emma Taylor, who also plays for Saracens in London, were the guinea pigs for the pilot program, which NFP and Rugby Canada have just extended until 2026.

The idea isn’t to phase them out of their playing careers, but just to give them options and get them thinking ahead of when they do decide to hang up their cleats.

“Fingers crossed they both stay physically healthy and right through the next World Cup and a bit beyond that,” Saddington says. “We’re not putting an end date on their career, that’s on them. We’re just trying to give them experience in an industry that is global, because who knows where they end up.”

Taylor is working in the marketing arm of NFP, having gained a business degree from St. Francis Xavier University as well as a master’s in project management from the Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School in Dublin.

Taylor estimates that she works an average of 25 hours a week for NFP, though she has done as many as 40 hours when her training schedule allows.

Given that much of her department is also working remotely, the 31-year-old Scotsburn, N.S., product doesn’t feel as though she is missing out on the in-office experience. However, while she has found that her colleagues at NFP take a positive interest in and support her rugby endeavours, she says that hasn’t always been the case.

“I did work with like a lot of like, middle-aged men in the shipbuilding industry who, I would go away for a tour, and they’d be like, ‘Oh, that must have been so nice. How was your vacation in England? Wow, it’s crazy that you got a month off.’” she says.

“[And you’re thinking] well, wasn’t a vacation, it wasn’t a month off. People don’t really understand at all how much time and effort that goes into it.”

For Rugby Canada, the hope is that this kind of partnership is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to supporting the growth and success of rugby in this country.

As Nathan Bombrys, the president of Rugby Canada, puts it succinctly, “We’re a not-for-profit national sports organization, not an NHL franchise.”

Bombrys, who took over the reins of Rugby Canada in July, 2022, is looking to help the women maintain their status as one of the world’s leading rugby teams – currently ranked fourth – while helping the men return to the top 12 from their present rank of 21st.

Programs such as this partnership with NFP can only be of benefit to that goal, he says, and in time he’d like to see similar initiatives launched with the men’s squad.

“As much as everyone else has got their players being professional and playing, that’s just not where we are,” he says, comparing rugby’s status in Canada compared to some other countries where it is a more prominent sport. “So you know, supporting our players to pursue their careers and their rugby at the same time is where we are and leaning into it we get opportunities like this.”