Yoonet Yoonet Proposal · QCRU
Proposal · April 2026 For Craig Coetzee, Treasurer

A website worthy of country rugby.

Craig — you came to us because the QCRU website isn't pulling its weight. This document walks you through what's happening today, what a rebuild needs to look like if it's going to serve the union for the next decade, and how we'd structure the work so the board knows exactly what it's getting.

Start reading See the numbers Reading time ~ 9 minutes
45 /100
Site health score
Measured against industry benchmarks
27
Pages on the current site
Only 6 have meaningful content
16 / 23
Homepage images missing alt text
Invisible to search and screen readers
9
Words on the Participate page
The page meant to grow the union
Where you are today

Queensland Country Rugby Union works. The site doesn't.

The platform isn't the real problem — although it has real problems. The deeper issue is that the site has been built once, handed over, and quietly drifted. A volunteer committee inheriting a website without a technical partner is how you end up here.

A page called "Who are we ………………"

Sits at a public URL with trailing full stops. Nobody intended it. It is a symptom.

The homepage has no H1

For a site whose job includes being found on Google, this is a structural error.

GTM snippet contains unrendered PHP

Analytics tracking is partially broken. Nobody caught it when it was deployed.

Committee bios are invisible to crawlers

The authority and experience behind QCRU cannot be read by Google or AI search.

Find a Club hands visitors to australia.rugby

The moment someone wants to participate, they leave the QCRU site entirely.

News section has been quiet since June 2025

A visitor today has no way of knowing whether the union is still active.

The content picture

The mission is barely documented on the site that's meant to serve it.

The representative pathway — Heelers, Orchids, Blue Heelers, Blue Orchids, QCRU Pups — is the thing that distinguishes country from city rugby in Queensland. On the current site it's the least visible section. No dedicated team pages. No selection policies. No success stories. Competition pages for Teenage, Seniors and Community Rugby each contain between 8 and 12 words.

The opportunity

Not a rebuild. A platform, plus the rhythm to keep it alive.

If we stop at the rebuild, eighteen months from now you're looking at a shiny new site with the same empty competition pages and the same stale news section. The platform was never the problem.

We want to give QCRU a site that punches above its weight — the strongest digital position of any country rugby union in Australia — and a commercial arrangement that keeps a technical partner in the relationship so a broken GTM tag doesn't sit unnoticed for two years.

Platform

Astro plus Sanity. Static pages that load instantly. Structured content volunteers cannot break. Custom schema from day one.

Content

The representative pathway gets the section it deserves. Named coaches, real bios, selection policies, success stories. Every page is real on launch day.

Rhythm

A monthly fee keeps us on the hook for the site. Fixtures posted, news after matches, issues fixed inside a business day. No drift.

What we'd build

A proper site structure. Built around the three audiences QCRU actually serves.

The current site has 27 pages, most of them thin. The new site has fewer pages, every one of them earning its place. Here is the structure we'd propose — signed off with the board before a pixel is drawn.

Audiences — Players & families Clubs & coaches Wider rugby community
  • ◇

    Home

    The shop window. Hero story, pathway teaser, latest news, fixture ribbon, and a clear path into each of the three audiences.

    All
  • ◉

    About

    Who runs the union and why they do it. Every bio rendered as plain text with Person schema — so Google and AI search can actually read it.

    Wider rugby community
    • Our Story
    • Who We Are
    • Board & Committee
    • Partners & Sponsors
    • QC Rugby Foundation
  • ★ Priority section — the mission of the union
    ★

    Representative Pathway

    The mission of the union, made visible. Each representative side gets its own page with coaches, selection policy, current squad, and history. Success stories link out to players who've gone higher.

    Players & families
    • How the Pathway Works
    • Queensland Country Heelers
    • Queensland Country Orchids
    • Blue Heelers (Junior Men)
    • Blue Orchids (Junior Women)
    • QCRU Pups
    • Selections & Policies
    • Success Stories
  • ◈

    Competitions

    The product pages of country rugby. No more 8-word Teenage Rugby page — each competition gets a real page with structure, contacts, and this season's story.

    Clubs & coaches
    • Overview
    • Teenage Rugby
    • Seniors Rugby
    • Women's Rugby
    • Community Rugby
    • Champions Archive
  • ⬢

    Clubs & Sub Unions

    The Find-a-Club journey lives on the QCRU site instead of handing visitors to australia.rugby. North / Central / South structure explained, every club findable, resources in one place.

    Clubs & coaches
    • Sub Union Structure
    • Club Directory
    • For Clubs (resources & comms)
  • ◐

    Participate

    How to get involved, written for actual humans. Players, coaches, officials, and volunteers each get a page that answers "what do I do next?"

    Players & families
    • Players
    • Coaching
    • Officials & Referees
    • Volunteers
  • ◎

    Fixtures & Results

    Embedded from Rugby Explorer (xplorer.rugby/qcru). Rugby Australia has already invested in that infrastructure — we link and embed, we don't rebuild.

    All
  • ◇

    News & Media

    Alive. Structured News schema on every article with author, date, hero image. Posts appear in rich results. Videos and gallery are separate tabs.

    All
    • News
    • Videos
    • Gallery
  • ▤

    Resources

    Downloads, FAQs, and a member-only zone for committee documents and club resources — gated without being hostile.

    Clubs & coaches
    • Downloads
    • FAQ
    • Member Resources (protected)
  • ✉

    Contact

    A real page with real people. Not a form that goes into a black hole.

    All
The stack, in plain English

Astro plus Sanity plus proper schema. No WordPress. No plugins. No drift.

The platform

Astro

Astro ships static HTML by default. No heavy JavaScript runs on the page unless we explicitly ask it to — which means the site loads instantly on a phone at a country ground with patchy signal.

Why it's right for QCRU

A content-heavy site like QCRU — news, fixture links, pathway explainers, champions archives — does not need a single-page app. It needs pages that open in under a second and rank well on Google.

The CMS

Sanity

Sanity is where volunteers edit the site. A news article has a title field, a date field, an author field, a body field, and an image field — and there is no way to paste in a press release with the wrong formatting or accidentally delete a section.

Why it's right for QCRU

Content is structured at the database level, not free-form HTML. The design is locked in the code. Editors cannot break the design, and every piece of content has the metadata Google and AI search need to surface it.

The schema

Structured data, done properly

Schema is the invisible markup that tells search engines what a page is about. A SportsOrganization isn't a generic Organization. A coach bio is a Person, not a paragraph. A news article is a NewsArticle, not a blog post.

Why it's right for QCRU

When a parent searches "Queensland Country Heelers fixtures" or asks ChatGPT about the country rugby pathway, the site has a real chance of being the answer — not just a blue link in the middle of page two.

The schema layer

Four types, applied from day one.

The current site uses a generic Organization type. That's wrong for a sporting body. We fix it at the foundation.

Every page validates with Google's Rich Results Test before it goes live.

  • SportsOrganization

    QCRU itself. Sits on the home page and the about section. Tells Google this is a sporting body, not a generic non-profit.

  • Person

    Every coach, selector, board member, and standout pathway player. Plain-text bio. Links to clubs and sub-unions where relevant.

  • NewsArticle

    Every news post. Title, date published, author (a Person), hero image with alt text, publisher (the SportsOrganization). Eligible for rich results.

  • SportsEvent

    Representative fixtures, where Rugby Explorer doesn't already provide its own. Prefer linking through when they do.

Also worth saying

What we're not doing.

Every integration and plugin is something we'd maintain for you over the next two years. We want to keep that list honest.

  • No WordPress

    No plugins, no theme porting, no Gutenberg blocks. That's what got the site here.

  • No fixture rebuild

    Rugby Explorer is Rugby Australia's investment. We embed and link.

  • No Salesforce integration (v1)

    We link to existing forms. Revisit if it becomes a priority.

  • No empty pages at launch

    If a page doesn't have real content on launch day, it doesn't go live.

How we work

Build. Grow. Report.

Three lenses we apply to every engagement. Build the right thing. Grow it with a monthly rhythm. Report honestly on whether it's working. Skip any one of these and the site drifts back to where it started.

Build

Build the right thing, properly.

A site that reads like it was planned — not a collection of pages bolted on over five years.

  • Discovery & sitemap sign-off
    Thirty-minute call with Craig and the board. We leave with a signed-off sitemap, a content inventory, and clarity on who owns which pages.
  • Design system & component library
    Built once, reused across every page. New pages in year two look right automatically — no design drift.
  • Astro + Sanity build
    Static pages, structured content, custom schema types. Production-ready from week five.
  • Content migration & writing
    We draft what we can draft. Committee supplies what only QCRU can source. No page launches empty.
Grow

Keep the site alive after launch day.

Most proposals go quiet here. Ours doesn't — because the WaaS retainer is how this works.

  • News publishing rhythm
    Committee posts via Sanity, we QA. If the most recent article is ever more than 60 days old, the site looks inactive — we won't let that happen.
  • Ongoing SEO health
    Monthly crawl, Core Web Vitals monitoring, schema validation. Issues get fixed, not logged.
  • Schema maintenance
    When Google changes the rules — and they do — the site stays eligible for rich results. That's work that happens in the background.
  • Quarterly deep refresh
    Season opener content swap, sponsor updates, champions archive added, success stories expanded. Included in the retainer.
Report

Show the work, show the numbers.

You get a proper read on whether the site is doing its job. No vanity metrics.

  • Monthly SEO snapshot
    Visibility, rankings, click-through, broken links. One page, sent to Craig, readable by the board without explanation.
  • Core Web Vitals dashboard
    Live read on page speed, stability, interactivity — the metrics Google actually uses for rankings.
  • Quarterly review with Craig
    Thirty minutes every three months. What's working, what needs attention, what's coming next season.
  • Honest read, every time
    When a metric dips we tell you why and what we're doing about it — not a sanitised deck.
Timeline

Ten to twelve weeks from green light to launch.

Six phases. Clear ownership on every deliverable. The shape of the work from first call to DNS cutover — with the honest caveat that content readiness, not build complexity, drives the schedule.

Ownership — Yoonet delivers QCRU delivers Joint
  1. Weeks 1–2 Phase 01

    Discovery & sitemap sign-off

    Thirty-minute discovery call with Craig and nominated board members. We leave with a signed-off sitemap, a content inventory, and an assigned owner for every page.
    Deliverables
    • Discovery call with Craig + board
      Both
    • Sitemap sign-off
      QCRU
    • Content inventory: keep / rewrite / retire
      Yoonet
    • Committee-sourced content list with deadlines
      Both
  2. Weeks 3–4 Phase 02

    Design direction & component system

    Visual language locked. Brand, typography, colour, component library. The things that make every future page look right without starting from scratch.
    Deliverables
    • Brand direction presented
      Yoonet
    • Brand direction approved
      QCRU
    • Component library built (buttons, cards, nav, forms)
      Yoonet
    • Key page wireframes approved
      QCRU
  3. Weeks 5–8 Phase 03

    Astro build & Sanity schemas

    The hands-on build. Static Astro pages, Sanity schemas for every content type, custom schema markup (SportsOrganization, Person, NewsArticle, SportsEvent) wired into every template.
    Deliverables
    • Astro page templates built
      Yoonet
    • Sanity schemas + Studio configured
      Yoonet
    • Core content migration (pages we can migrate as-is)
      Yoonet
    • Representative Pathway pages drafted
      Yoonet
    • Board bios & success stories supplied
      QCRU
  4. Weeks 8–10 Phase 04

    Content production & fixture architecture

    Review cycles and the long-tail content work. Rugby Explorer embedded on fixtures & results. Club directory populated. News section seeded with three real posts so launch day doesn't look empty.
    Deliverables
    • Pathway bios, policies, success stories reviewed
      QCRU
    • Rugby Explorer embed + deep links
      Yoonet
    • Club directory populated
      Both
    • Launch news posts seeded (3 articles)
      Yoonet
  5. Week 11 Phase 05

    QA, accessibility, performance

    The unglamorous week. WCAG 2.1 AA audit, schema validation on every template, Core Web Vitals tuning, cross-browser and mobile QA. Nothing ships with known issues.
    Deliverables
    • WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility audit
      Yoonet
    • Schema validation (Google Rich Results Test, every page type)
      Yoonet
    • Core Web Vitals tuning (LCP, CLS, INP)
      Yoonet
    • Final board walkthrough
      Both
  6. Week 12 Phase 06

    Launch & DNS cutover

    Go-live. DNS cutover at an agreed time (out of hours, not match day). 301 redirect map for every legacy URL. Post-launch monitoring for the first 72 hours.
    Deliverables
    • DNS cutover (coordinated window)
      Yoonet
    • 301 redirects from legacy URLs
      Yoonet
    • Post-launch 72-hour monitoring
      Yoonet
    • Committee CMS walkthrough
      Both
The honest caveat

Timeline is driven by content readiness, not build complexity. If QCRU moves quickly on reviewing drafts and signing off board bios, we can pull a week or two forward. If reviews take longer, the build waits. We'd rather launch a complete site a fortnight late than a patchy site on time.

Investment

$679 per month, plus GST. No capital hit.

We operate on a Website-as-a-Service model. You don't pay anything upfront. You pay a fixed monthly fee that covers build, hosting, monitoring, SEO, accessibility, and capped ongoing updates — amortised across 24 months.

What's included

Every line. Every month.

No surprise invoices. No "scope creep" conversations. These are the things we do because they're part of what you pay for.

  • Full rebuild on Astro + Sanity
  • Custom schema architecture (SportsOrganization, Person, NewsArticle, SportsEvent)
  • Content migration & writing support for non-QCRU-specific pages
  • Rugby Explorer integration & deep linking
  • Hosting, CDN, SSL, uptime monitoring
  • Core Web Vitals monitoring & performance tuning
  • Monthly SEO health report
  • Direct access to Yoonet facilitation team
  • Accessibility compliance to WCAG 2.1 AA
  • Up to 2 hours of structural updates per month
  • Response to critical issues within 1 business day
  • Quarterly review with Craig or nominated committee contact
A comparison point

Built traditionally, a rebuild of this scope runs $40K–$70K over two years.

Traditional agency
$25K–$45K
upfront build
+ $600–$1,000/mo ongoing
Yoonet WaaS
$16,296
total over 24 months
all-in · no capex · in support

We can do this because we run the same stack across multiple clients, we have an in-house team rather than agency overhead, and the WaaS model smooths the cashflow for both sides.

Optional

Add-ons, if and when they're useful.

Activated per quarter · adjustable anytime
Content retainer
$249/mo

Five articles per month, drafted by our team and sent for committee review. For when the news calendar gets busy.

CMS editor training
$750 one-off

A dedicated onboarding programme for the QCRU volunteer(s) who will publish on Sanity. Recorded. Reusable.

Annual deep refresh
Included

Season opener content swap, sponsor updates, champions archive added, success stories expanded. One per year, included in the retainer.

Indicative sites

What we'd look to for direction.

A handful of representative sporting bodies whose sites do one or two things better than QCRU's current site does them. We'd borrow the principle, not the pixels.

Directional, not aspirational. These sites do one or two things exceptionally well that we want to borrow — not templates we'd copy. The QCRU site should look and feel like Queensland Country, not like World Rugby or the Lions.

Next steps

A thirty-minute call and a sitemap sign-off.

Three steps between today and a live site. No bespoke contract drafting, no procurement gauntlet — just a conversation, an agreement in principle, and a target date.

  1. 01

    Share this with the board

    Forward the URL. It reads in about fifteen minutes. Collect questions or objections before the call so we can address them directly.

    ~ 15 min read
  2. 02

    30-minute discovery call

    A short call with Craig and whoever from the board should be in the room. We confirm the sitemap in principle, agree on a content approach, and answer whatever's still open.

    Week of your choosing
  3. 03

    Green light · launch July 2026

    From sign-off we aim for launch in the first week of July — a clean runway to the winter rugby season and the second half of the representative calendar.

    12 weeks from sign-off
Ready when you are

A rebuild puts QCRU in the strongest digital position of any country rugby union in Australia.

The site is the shop window of the union — the first impression for every parent, every volunteer, every prospective sponsor, every journalist covering a representative fixture. Let's make it one worth standing behind.

Book the call
Ben Carter · Yoonet
ben@yoonet.io
Book the 30-min call