Player, Coach, and Performance Staff Perceptions of, Experiences with, and Preferences for Nutrition Services Within Rugby: An Implementation‑Focused Qualitative Exploration

To explore how players, performance staff, and dietitians perceive, experience, and prefer nutrition services within professional rugby, a qualitative study using semi-structured interviews and thematic analysis, guided by an implementation science lens (Integrated Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services, i-PARIHS), was conducted. Purposeful sampling was used to recruit 27 participants (13 professional players, 5 dietitians, 1 coach, 3 strength and conditioning coaches, 3 physiotherapists, 2 high-performance managers) from an Australian professional rugby organisation. Interviews were conducted online between April 2024 and July 2025, transcribed, inductively coded, and thematically analysed with iterative verification by multiple researchers. Analysis was completed to support understanding of factors that may influence implementation, including the i-PARIHS constructs of innovation, recipients, and context. Three inter-related themes were generated. (1) Organisational value and role clarity determined dietitians’ visibility, influence, and the credibility of nutrition messaging; when nutrition was not championed by leadership and performance staff, advice was fragmented and dietitians’ contribution was reduced to narrow, “tangible” metrics. (2) Food practices were the primary vehicle through which nutrition services were enacted, including menu planning, food provision, shared meals, and food-literacy support; nutrition service gaps were most evident in women’s, pathway, and rehabilitation contexts and for athletes experiencing food insecurity. (3) Limited resourcing constrained proactive delivery, relationship-building, and long-term planning, forcing reactive practice and uneven access across programs. Nutrition was widely regarded as foundational to growth, preparation, recovery, broader training adaptation, and athlete well-being in rugby, yet current delivery models underperform due to undervaluation, blurred responsibilities, and insufficient staffing and food-system support. Findings suggest elevating dietetics to fully integrated, full-time roles and embedding equitable food-centred provision and food-literacy interventions are necessary to improve consistency, uptake, and athlete outcomes, and to reduce avoidable inequities between squads nationally.