KIDS FIRST INITIATIVE GATHERS PACE
September 2016 sees a new landmark in Age Grade rugby in England, as the Kids First initiative comes fully into effect across the country. Changes have been agreed which will see for the first time a harmonised approach to how young players are developed whether it be in clubs, schools or in girls’ rugby.
I’m aware that this issue has caused some division as well as a certain amount of wailing and gnashing of teeth. Last year Rugby World magazine posted a ‘For and Against’ piece with the Pro camp represented by Walcot RFC U10 coach Dave Parsons, while for the Anti stance they deployed the rather bigger gun of former England centre Simon Halliday (no disrespect intended Dave). I’m not sure if this disparity was a deliberate attempt to influence people’s thinking, or if they simply chose Halliday because of his extremely vocal public opposition to Kids First expressed in his role on the committee at Esher RFC. View the RW piece here.
The argument advanced by Halliday and others, including the Daily Mail, was that the game was going soft or in some way ‘dumbing down’ in trying to remove all competitive and physical elements from Age Grade rugby. Even my esteemed co-author Spike – though I hasten to add his views were expressed as persuasively and in as reasoned a manner as always – shared the view that this initiative was a reform too far.
Even within my own club I’ve found opposition to Kids First or at best a kind of grudging acceptance, followed by a heads-in-the-sand ‘ignore-it-and-it’ll-go-away attitude’. Some of the older age groups – and more worryingly last season the chair of AG rugby and the Club Coaching Co-ordinator (CCC) – have displayed the same sort of illogical and uninformed, knee-jerk hostility epitomised by Halliday.
So, let me first nail my colours to the mast and say that I am well and truly in favour of Kids First for a number of reasons. At the coaching level, I like Kids First because it promotes coaching the game in the way I have already being doing it for about 6 years now – though I have to say it also goes above and beyond my approach and means I will have to raise my game a bit!
I also like it from a personal point of view, as it seeks to challenge and eliminate certain attitudes, values and behaviours that have been prevalent in the Age Grade game (this despite the prominence given to Core Values at every club in the land), and which damage both the child’s enjoyment of the game along with his/her potential to develop as a player.
Thirdly, from the perspective of a fan I simply LOVE what the Kids First approach, in tandem with the New Rules of Play, is doing to the skill levels and entertainment on display in Age Grade rugby. Most games at U11 that I see are full of kids trying to keep the ball alive and take risks in a ‘Barbarianesque’ style of play that is thrilling to watch.
So to conclude this introduction to my series on Kids First, I’ll simply observe that far from dumbing the game down, this initiative is producing players who play smarter: better tactical decision makers, able to read the game and identify opportunities, and with the skills to exploit what they see. Those who argue (as some do) that they want to see more youngsters boshing into each other and mauling, fail to see the irony in their accusation that the game is seeking to become less intelligent (I assume that’s what they mean by dumbing down?).
All the above notwithstanding, this is happening and is going live from September 2016. As the Cybermen might say, “Resistance is futile” – that being so, it surely behoves even the hardiest opponent of Kids First to grit his teeth and try and make the best of the many positives it offers.
Our sport has always thrived on change, and the need to evolve in Age Grade rugby has been clear for some time. The most pernicious phrase in the English language for anyone who wants to see progress is ‘This is the way we’ve always done it’. That is the attitude, I’m afraid, that would have seen William Webb Ellis given 6 of the best and 1000 lines, and this game that we all love so much would never have come into being.
To be continued….
Footnote: DB9 coaches an U11 mixed team and U13/U15 girls in West Yorkshire; in his professional guise he also coaches at a private prep school in North Yorkshire, and runs weekend and after-school groups for Rugbytots involving children as young as two. Safe to say, he has studied this issue from just about every angle possible for a coach!
FUNDING CUT IS A WAKE-UP CALL
Last January, Sport England, the body which presides over the allocation of public money to sports development in England, announced its spending plans for the next four years. A £493m investment is to be made with the aim of keeping alive the legacy of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, by increasing participation in grassroots sport. In accordance with this aim, the funding allocations were redistributed in favour of those sports with a solid, workable plan or a good track record for increasing participation, while those sports which are under-performing in this respect saw their funding cut.
For both codes of rugby, as well as cricket, there was an expected reduction in funding. The failure of all these sports to provide adequate evidence of actual or projected growth in numbers participating made this inevitable. Despite all three sports being commercially successful at the elite levels, clearly the attraction and retention of players further down the chain is more problematic and my own experience as an age grade coach in rugby bears this out. All of which tells me one thing – we need to get our act together and start delivering on the RFU’s objectives for player recruitment and retention, before we lose even more funding.
This isn’t going to be easy, especially when the chief competition to both codes of rugby in their core market (little boys who like chasing a ball around and being part of a team) is football, a sport whose funding was increased by 582%. That’s five hundred and eighty-two percent, in case you think it’s a typo. It was a stat that threw me into a fury of outrage at the time. “How the hell” I thought, “can they justify that kind of increase in funding to a sport that is already swimming in cash? Why can’t grassroots football development be funded by donations from every Premier League player – God knows most of them wouldn’t miss £5000 a week.” And so on in a similar vein until the initial surge of anger had dissipated.
But that’s irrelevant to rugby. So is the fact that football is the first point of call for most parents wanting a sporting activity for their boys; ditto the fact that in the majority of primary schools, football is the only formally organised sport available to boys. Football clearly has a massive advantage over rugby in terms of initial recruitment of players, but the fact remains that football’s performance in growing the game justifies the increase in funding, while rugby is being told to pull its socks up. As the guardians of the game’s future, we have to strive now to justify the same kind of largesse from Sport England in turn. Here at the start of a new season, it’s a time when we should be focusing our minds on this very issue.
So just what can we do to encourage more youngsters to take up rugby first of all, and to ensure those we have stay with us? The latter are in some ways the easier group in that we get plenty of chance to influence their decisions directly. Here a few basic suggestions for keeping players:
- Focus on FUN and skills development rather than winning. A winning-is-everything mentality will, over time, drive more players away than it attracts. If you focus on the players learning and enjoying themselves, the results will follow.
- Treat every player as of equal importance, whether they are the strongest player or the least talented in your squad. Don’t treat ‘star’ players as special cases. Fairness and consistency are key ways of showing respect to your players; conversely, nothing alienates parents quicker than their child being dealt with unfairly.
- If you’re lucky enough to have enough players for 2 or 3 teams, consider making these mixed-ability rather than A, B & C etc. Having a really strong team that wins games easily will not teach them anything; by contrast, players in a weak C team who get battered every week will soon lose the will to keep turning out – yet these players could be the future stars of your Academy side if you keep them. (You also avoid the dilemma about ‘dropping’ players who are out of form if all your teams are playing at the same standard.)
- Foster team spirit both on and off the field by getting the players to do social activities together as a whole squad a few times each season: bowling, laserquest, obstacle courses or a simple barbecue are all great ways to do this. Taking them away on tour or a camping trip provides a great bonding experience from which even the youngest players will benefit hugely.
- Engage with the players’ parents and enlist their support for non-rugby activities like first aid, fundraising, organising tours and festivals.
- Make sure everything you do satisfies the core values of the game: Teamwork, Respect, Enjoyment, Discipline and Sportsmanship.
The good news is that the new rules of play now being used across England are tailor-made to assist coaches with player retention. Player involvement is promoted by having smaller teams; fewer and simpler rules mean fewer reasons for refs to blow the whistle so the game keeps flowing. Tag rugby games at U7 and U8 are literally non-stop action with loads of tries and all players fully involved. From U9 upwards, the complex rules and technical skills are brought in by stages so that the learning curve remains manageable and gives kids real opportunities to develop at a pace that suits them.
We have everything in place to make rugby an attractive option for youngsters and their parents. Smart, child-centred coaching will deliver the right outcomes, the only ones that should matter in age grade rugby: player recruitment, fun and enjoyment, skills progression and player retention. Let’s get it done.
For full details of the January funding bulletin from Sport England, follow this link:
http://www.sportengland.org/about_us/our_news/almost_£05_billion_investment.aspx
THE JOYS OF AGE-GRADE COACHING, PART ONE: The start of a new season
Five more sleeps! A new season starts on Sunday and for the first time in a few years I’m especially excited and enthusiastic at the prospect, so much so that I’m counting the days just as I hope my players will be. Five more sleeps… can hardly wait!
The reason for the extra excitement and anticipation is that this season, I have the under 9 squad. The players I’ve been nurturing for the past two years will be ditching their TAG belts in a formal handover ceremony, and starting contact rugby mostly for the first time. It’s a significant stage in a player’s career and one that’s vitally important to manage correctly as a coach; indeed, I consider it a privilege to be able to guide young players through an experience that some view with a certain amount of trepidation. The right input from me and my colleagues at this stage can make all the difference, meaning players learn to love the rough and tumble side of the game and carry on that love through long playing careers as adults.
One thing that’s going to help massively is the adoption of the New Rules of Play. Previously, the transition from U8 to U9 meant learning about rucks, mauls, scrums and line-outs in addition to tackling. This represented a massive learning curve and meant that only the very talented players, the ‘naturals’, were able to pick up all these skills adequately. Maybe 80% of your squad would be struggling with one or more aspects of the game, and those for whom most of it was a struggle would eventually give it up. With player retention being a vital objective for coaches, this made it far harder to achieve the right kind of success.
The New Rules have simplified the game, reducing to 7-a-side from 9 and stripping out everything bar the tackle for U9s (the rest is brought in progressively over the following three seasons so that by U13, the whole game is in place). All I need to worry about now is how to tackle and be tackled, and what to do afterwards. With the ruck and maul removed, the contest for possession also goes and the defending side has to allow the attackers to move the ball on from the tackle area. In fact, it’s not far removed from another form of rugby, very popular here in West Yorkshire, which places the focus on ball-handling skills and solid defence. The counties along the M62 corridor were the last to adopt New Rules, I think out of a fear that we were switching to ‘RL-lite’ as one coach described it, and that as a result we would lose players to the 13-a-side game. I see it as more of an opportunity though; firstly to focus on developing our players’ skills in manageable chunks, and also to attract players from RL who want to play rugby in winter as well as summer, and who won’t find the game so alien.
So that’s why I’m feeling so enthusiastic about the coming year. I’ve sent out my briefing e-mail for Sunday and already had three replies indicating that my players are also raring to go. The best of them read as follows: “…see you on Sunday for the new season (Anna already has her kit laid out in preparation!).” When your players are as excited about it as you are, that’s half the battle won already, and just one of the many joys of being an age grade rugby coach.
RugbyMusings wishes you an excellent 2013-14 season, wherever you play.
WHY DO WE BOTHER WITH LAWS IN MINI RUGBY?
We’re a quarter of the way through season 2012-13 and already it’s been a very promising year for our U8s. Numbers are good, and at 29 players we have the biggest U8 squad our club’s ever had. This presents challenges in terms of getting all the players involved in games, but by being organised we’re able to ensure that, come match day, all of them get a fair amount of time on-pitch and everyone gets a chance to run with the ball. In training we try and maximise this with small-sided games on reduced pitches, and we split up all the ‘best’ players between the teams so that there’s a mix of ability in each – then we ensure that these more skilful players don’t hog all the play. It’s not perfect, but we’re at least giving all the players the opportunity to develop their skills in a fun and enjoyable environment.
So far, so idyllic!! You’d be forgiven for thinking that everything in our garden is rosy, but alas nothing’s perfect and despite all of the above, I have a gripe. In fact, it’s a perennial gripe, one that I’ve noticed has become more of a problem at this level of rugby in the 6 years since I last coached an U8 team. And the gripe is this: we have a set of modified Laws for this form of the game, to provide a structured yet simplified framework for the kids to display their skills on; yet far too many coaches seem to regard a lot of these rules as inconvenient or optional. This creates points of tension and contention whenever we play a match against another club and – as my son has indicated to me – frustrates the hell out of my players when they feel the opposition has been allowed to cheat throughout the game.
There are a number of possible responses to this. One could be that I relax my refereeing of the game and allow/encourage my players to infringe in the same way as other teams. This would allow them a level playing field to complete on, but it goes against the grain for me to tell my players it’s OK to cheat if it helps you win. I realise that as open-age players they’ll be expected to ‘play the ref’ and to be a bit smart and streetwise about infringing to slow down the opposition. However, I feel that when you’re taking players new to the game and moulding them into rugby players for the future, you should make every effort to reinforce respect for all facets of the game including the Laws – and for me that means serial infringers shouldn’t be allowed to prosper.
Response number 2 would be to just chill out and ignore it – different refs interpret the Laws differently, my players have to learn to accept this, and as a coach I have to set the example for them to follow. Any frustration I feel needs to be hidden and I ought to focus on what my players can do to outflank the opposition even if the ref is letting them infringe. I’d agree with all of that – except for the fact that my players deserve better, and when they know that the ref is getting it wrong, I’m the one they ask why. Somehow, ‘never mind the ref, look at your own performance’ seems a little too harsh a message to give to a 7-year-old. In any case, it’s not as if the Laws for U8 rugby are especially complicated or difficult to referee correctly, so surely it’s not too much to ask that a ref be more than just vaguely competent?
Response number 3 is to approach the ref in question, say at half-time, and request clarification on why infringements are or aren’t being dealt with. For example, to ask ‘I notice you’re not pinging them for handing-off sir, does that mean our players can do it too?’ However, this is fraught with difficulty. Some refs will take your oblique point and will clamp down on the relevant offence for the rest of the game, and will be happy that you’ve brought it to their attention. This is a definite win. However, others will take your intervention as a personal criticism and a rather tetchy exchange then ensues in which no-one emerges the winner. I had one of these at a well-known festival in the south of England in April, in which a neutral ref was great at pinging my players for not passing within 3 steps after being tagged, but terrible at penalising the opposition for shoulder-barging my players out of the way. At half time I politely requested that he stop them from doing it; he very shirtily replied that he was the ref and I didn’t have the right to tell him how to ref the game and he hadn’t seen the offence in question. Not a successful outcome then, and one which probably left each of us looking at the other and thinking “Self-righteous prick!”
Response number 4 is never to allow anyone but me to ref our games – just not practical I’m afraid, and in some cases not necessary as a number of refs are every bit as good as me or nearly so!
No, the only solution that is really acceptable is to get all coaches at our age group to referee using all the modified Laws, rather than ignoring certain ones to give their team an advantage. It’s the only way to ensure a level playing field for both teams in a match. ‘Local variations’ can mean that in some cases your team is asked to play a vastly different set of rules than they are used to. A few years ago, our TAG age groups toured the North East and on starting their first match at their festival on the Sunday, were surprised to find a ‘double-tag’ rule in operation whereby ripping off both an opponent’s tags at once, gave you an immediate turnover. All the Northumbrian teams were aware of the rule, but it took our players some time to adapt. Not all differences are as pronounced, but it is true to say that every time we play a match, the Laws used are slightly different from the previous game. For youngsters learning the game and the skills to play it, this kind of inconsistency needs to be stamped out. I meet coaches who justify a lax approach to refereeing minis’ rugby on the grounds that ‘They’re only kids’ i.e. the poor little cherubs shouldn’t be burdened with being expected to follow the rules of the game. So why do you think the Laws are there? The fact is, the simplified Laws for TAG rugby are designed for kids to be able to follow. Yes, it might be difficult and onerous to get it across, but with time and persistence, it’s definitely achievable. And once the habit is formed, it gets easier to help the players adapt to the Laws as they change with the different stages along the Age Grade pathway.
It might be that CBs and RDOs need to give some thought to refereeing as part of a coach’s skill set so that we get more competent refs working with the youngest players, then match day will stop being a lottery based on what rules the home side thinks should apply.
MACHO RUGBY.
Imitating elite rugby may be damaging our young players.
Reading a recent discussion on another rugby forum, I’ve been forced to rethink my attitude to how I, as a coach of young players, want to approach the contact areas of the game. This will involve looking carefully and honestly at mistakes I’ve made in the past, as well as shifting my focus from trying to develop players who are ‘hard’ to players who are effective while continuing to enjoy playing.
First of all, I love watching hard contact rugby and when big tackles go in, or there’s a huge shove on in a scrum or some ferocious rucking, that’s great. Speed and physicality are two of the aspects of the international/elite club game that make it so rewarding to watch. I wouldn’t want to see that part of the game watered down and provided players remember to stay within the Laws, there’s a lot of enjoyment to be had from this aspect of rugby. Certainly the 6 Nations and other elite competitions would be the poorer if the game were less physically abrasive, and it’s surely no accident that the most physically impressive and intimidating side in world rugby has also been consistently the best side and the most exciting to watch over the last 20 years. One of the things I don’t like much though, is how the language of the game has changed when describing the physical confrontation: a tackle is now almost always a ‘hit’ and we also hear of players being ‘smashed’, ‘creamed’, ‘dumped’ and ‘owned’ in the tackle. When you hear BBC commentators using these terms, you know they’ve been adopted as official parlance, so it surely won’t be long before the truly awful ‘man-shamed’ is being used by coaches up and down the land.
Now I know some of my readers will be saying “So what? It’s a man’s game isn’t it?” and indeed to cope with the game you have to ‘man up’ on the pitch. However, the use of these terms suggests to me a certain level of flippant contempt for the opponent that’s at odds with rugby’s core value of respect. It also serves to detach players from the consequences of their actions, so they charge ever more recklessly into contact without worrying about the damage they are doing to fellow-players. It seems that the primary aim of most international tackles is now to hurt and intimidate the opponent rather than just to stop him running, and only the superb physical condition of top players prevents a rash of injuries in every game. Even so, the cumulative effect of repeated high-impact collisions is responsible for massive physical damage to players, and the stats for injury absence in the Aviva Premiership bear this out.
Lower down the pyramid this brings problems. Players down at Tier 4 and below are also coached to play the game this way (and I know this from listening to what coaches shout to their players from the touchline). The problem is that as part time players, many of the guys at this level don’t get the fitness and conditioning work required to cope with these demands. When you start to be injured too often and have to have regular time off work to recover from rugby injuries (including those picked up in training), your employer will understandably get twitchy. Players might ultimately have to decide between rugby and a job, and inevitably given this choice they quit the game.
My real concern though is the effect on junior players, and again having coached and refereed junior rugby up to U15s I hear what coaches and players say during matches – it’s clear that players as young as 9 and 10 are being encouraged by coaches to put in big hits, not always legally. Physicality has been promoted at the expense of technique and this can be very damaging. I’ve had to speak to the forwards in an U11 game when as they packed down for the first scrum, the visiting hooker was exhorting his colleagues to put in a ‘massive hit lads, let’s smash ’em off the park’. I hear coaches calling out to key players to make ‘dominant’ tackles and to ‘dump him backwards’ and have had to warn players about potentially dangerous tackles even in U10 rugby. In an U12 game my older son was tackled round the neck as he attempted to score, and not only was the perpetrator not penalised (bad refereeing), but he was clapped on the back by team mates and cheered by parents and coaches for a ‘great hit’ (as opposed to being picked up for a crap tackle).
In a recent conversation with an orthopaedic consultant, I was told that the limb and joint injuries he now sees in rugby players are similar to injuries he sees in motor-cyclists hit by cars. This was when we were discussing my son’s torn ACL (anterior cruciate ligament), picked up at the age of 11, through being hit ridiculously hard from the side while his studs were caught in the ground. There was nothing illegal about the tackle, and the injury was down to bad luck as much as any other factor, but the tackler had stepped over the line from committed (which is desirable in a tackle) to ‘hard’. The end result is that after a partial recovery, my son has had to give up the game at the age of 13 and will need an operation once he stops growing, after which he may or may not play again.
So the message to coaches, especially of children, is that while commitment in contact is essential, excessive aggression is not. Kids, especially teenage boys, are naturally aggressive and don’t need to be encouraged to be more so. Junior coaches and refs have a duty of care to all players, not just their own, and need to remember that the players being smashed don’t necessarily have the strength and conditioning to withstand huge impacts. With the very youngest players, or with anyone new to the game, we also need to consider the emotional impact of being on the end of a huge hit. Even if there is no physical injury, being unceremoniously clattered by someone bigger, heavier and nastier than you can induce feelings of fear and humiliation, neither of which is conducive to enjoyment of the game. This will only be made worse if they then hear howls of approbation from the opposition coaches and parents on the touchline.
The young players in our care are generally playing for enjoyment and to be part of a team, not with any serious ambitions to play top-flight rugby, so there’s no need to try and produce miniature internationals. Those of them good enough to be picked up through the representative system will develop a harder edge to their play through having to compete at a higher standard, and this will benefit them and their club/school sides. For the less developed players, who aren’t able to give the same level of physical commitment, we risk ruining the experience of rugby for them if we set expectations for all the team to tackle hard and be physically aggressive and dominant. But the key thing to bear in mind is that what’s great to see at international level, is potentially dangerous – sometimes catastrophically so as in the case of Nathan Cubitt (http://www.nathancubitt.co.uk/) – for youngsters. So this coming season, please remember that the safety and well-being of all players comes before the satisfaction of seeing a big hit go in. If we promote technique ahead of physicality, the good tackle ahead of the big hit, we’ll have a safer, happier game for all participants.
IN RUGBY, FUN IS FUNDAMENTAL
I’ve been involved in rugby, of either code and sometimes both at once, since I started playing at the age of 11. Prior to that, I’d watched the game on television for as long as I could remember – and also had the pleasure of seeing my older sister play for the local boys’ RL team where she was the best tackler by some distance. My involvement has been varied: player, captain, parent, coach, manager, referee and administrator, so I’ve seen the game from just about every possible angle.
Many of the people reading this blog probably have one thing in common – that they’ve played rugby at whatever level, simply for the enjoyment of the game. They may enjoy it for a variety of different reasons: some will relish the physical side as a test of courage or as a means to work off aggression; others for the fitness element; and others still may value the team spirit and off-field camaraderie peculiar to rugby. But I’ve often thought that players – even internationals on a pretty good salary – play because they love playing.
I’ve arrived at this conclusion through experience and analysis of my own playing career, plus what I have learned about players and about myself in eight years as a junior rugby coach in Yorkshire, built on a foundation of lots of rugby watched over the years. Many other coaches I’ve spoken to tell me the same, and recently the RFU in England has recognised this in a review of how mini rugby is played, and the trend is now firmly towards encouraging enjoyment of the game rather than a focus on winning matches. However, I’m aware that if you’re reading this then you’re intelligent enough to expect some evidence to back up these bald assertions, so here goes.
First of all, look at international rugby. Some of the best sides of my lifetime (think France and Wales in the 70s, the 1984 Wallabies, pretty much any vintage of All Blacks and England from 2000-2003) have been characterised by a fast, exciting style of 15-man rugby. For those who like to believe England under Sir Clive were a boring, 10-man outfit winning games only through the boot of Jonny Wilkinson, watch the following video:
What you see in that clip (which doesn’t cover some of the magnificent rugby they played in 1999-2000, but if you can find video of the games v Wales and Ireland in 2000 you’ll enjoy more of the same) is a team that does the core basics superbly well at pace. There’s a big pack that is solid in the set piece and can be relied upon to win all its own ball and a few against the throw-in, and at the same time mobile enough to ensure lots of quick ball at the breakdown and to link usefully in attack from 1-8. Behind the scrum, there’s quick and decisive service from the half-backs, then great intelligent running and support lines from the outside backs to exploit gaps and finish moves. But it’s what goes on top that sets these great teams apart: outrageous individual skills and the balls to show them off on the biggest stage, right through the team from loose-head to full back, and all of the great teams have that in their locker. It’s the way kids play in the playground, and can only be described as players having fun on the pitch; the only difference being that unlike children, international players use their skills to serve the team rather than simply to try and shine.
So what does this look at England tell us? Clearly, those players were enjoying their rugby. But, you might say, that’s no surprise as they were winning most of their games and running in plenty of tries. Fair comment, but that puts the cart before the horse; they were scoring all those tries and winning their games BECAUSE they were enjoying their rugby. Those players were in a supremely happy place before they ever stepped onto the pitch, and as a result they played without fear and the results came from there. In Sir Clive Woodward’s superb book ‘Winning!’ he states that one of his goals when he took over the England job was to get the team playing rugby that they would enjoy playing and that spectators would want to watch. This was one of his key building blocks to success on the field and led to the ultimate prize of a World Cup triumph in 2003.
Lower down the pyramid, the benefits of playing for enjoyment are less tangible. Junior club sides, without the financial and logistical resources of an international team, find it harder to turn this approach into points because they don’t get to spend as long working on their skills and don’t have access to the very best in performance management and improvement tools. Nowhere is this more true than in age grade rugby where real success is usually measured elsewhere than on the scoreboard. Skills development and player retention are much more important performance indicators for junior coaches, and for those with players’ interests truly at heart, winning games and trophies is a secondary consideration. Having said that, my experience as an U7 coach this last season has been that by focusing on fun, enjoyment, team spirit and skills progression, results on the pitch follow. Starting in September with the aim of growing the squad, we made sure that every session was a fun experience for all the players, so they’d want to come back and would bring friends with them. We registered over 50 players, giving us a 28-player U8 squad to start next season and 23 remaining at U7. I expect retention to be about 94-98%, quite simply because the players love the experience, all get an opportunity to play, are treated fairly and just enjoy being around each other. It wasn’t until April that they first lost a competitive match, and even then, they played superb rugby in defeat – just as they did on tour at the end of the season, where in the first minute of their opening game in terrible conditions, they scored after a double switch and a dummy created a huge gap in the defence. They simply go onto the pitch each time aiming to play great rugby, rather than aiming to win.
When this sense of enjoyment is absent, it’s often painfully obvious. England’s ponderous performances at the last Rugby World Cup looked like a side who just didn’t want to be anywhere near a rugby field. Clearly, there was enjoyment being had of a sort in the bars and nightclubs of New Zealand, but from the player questionnaires leaked after the event, it wasn’t the healthy kind of fun that helps teams to bond. I’ve had personal experience of this with my older son, who having played from the age of 4 for his local club, gave up earlier this season because he was being constantly excluded from team activities. In a side looking to attack wide at every opportunity, and averaging over 40 points per game, he was playing centre, wing and full back and yet was never getting the ball. As game after game went by in which he only touched the ball if the opposition kicked it to him, his confidence collapsed and his performance went with it – and this had a knock-on effect at school where his rugby also went downhill. His club coach was aware he wasn’t happy but made no effort to involve him more fully in games, because it would have meant challenging the behaviour of some star players and the team was winning games so why meddle? They’ve focussed on winning and over the last two seasons they’ve got there, but I fear that the feel-good factor of winning is what holds them together. When they stop winning every week, will the team pull through, or will it implode?
My son’s experience is a clear indicator that without enjoyment of the game, young players will perform less well and may even give up altogether – after all, he quit from a winning team, so clearly the winning wasn’t enough for him. Similarly, all the very best teams play with a swagger and a smile and have every team member playing their part to the full and feeling properly included. At whatever level of the game, players play because they love playing. Fun is fundamental. Coaches ignore this fact at their peril.
What makes a great rugby coach?
For the first post on this new blog on all things rugby, I’m looking at the role of coaches in developing players. The turnaround in England’s fortunes in the 5 months between the end of the last World Cup and the conclusion of this year’s 6 Nations, as welcome as it was startling and unexpected, seems to be due in no small part to the appointment of a new coach in Stuart Lancaster. This underlined for me the fact that even at the highest level, coaches make a massive difference in getting the best out of players – or in some cases, making a sow’s ear out of a silk purse.
So what makes a great rugby coach? As a junior coach for the last 8 years, I’d make the following observtions (NB all of these are based on my experiences of junior rugby players in North of England – people working with different age groups and/or in different geographical locations might draw their own conclusions, and clearly point 7. won’t apply to coaches of open-age teams; at least, I hope not!):
1. A great coach is in it for the development of his* players, both as rugby players and as people, as opposed to being in it for the benefit of his own ego.
* or her, obviously
2. A great coach never assumes he knows everything, or that he has nothing to learn from the players.
3. A great coach achieves maximum opportunity for player and skills development by finding a balance between coach-centred and player-centred learning that suits the squad as a whole.
4. At the same time, a great coach also recognises that the approach taken at 3. will not work for certain individuals, and so delivers appropriate development activity to suit these players as well. For example, a more supportive approach with players who are struggling to master a particular skill versus a greater measure of challenge to stretch players who have mastered the skill already.
5. A great coach listens as much as he talks, and asks more questions than he supplies answers – it’s preferable for the players to find solutions to their own issues than to have someone else’s ideas imposed on them.
6. A great coach does not tolerate prima donna players at whatever age, or allow ‘star’ players to dominate the team to the detriment of quieter, less pushy players. No one is more important than any other player or the team as a whole.
7. A great coach will listen to the concerns of players’ parents, but will not allow parents to dictate or interfere over on-field matters.
8. A great coach will ultimately aim to have his players grow to a level beyond which he can add any value to them – so that they outgrow him naturally as they develop.
9. In addition, a great coach will recognise when that moment has come and will hand them over to someone else – even if it is earlier than he had prepared for.
10. Finally, and coaches forget this at their peril, a great coach always remembers that players play rugby because they enjoy playing and so retains an element of fun and enjoyment in training throughout.
Am I a great coach? I’d like to think so, but I don’t always live up to every one of my 10 Commandments. My teams won no trophies this year (the first time this has ever happened), but I’ve got 51 kids on the books most of whom turn out week in week out, who LOVE being there and who play attractive attacking rugby. They have a great willingness to try out new things in matches, a double switch and a dummy bringing them a try last time out, and they play for each other as much as for themselves. Every one of them is a star to me and there’s not a single one I’d want to lose. We’ll see how they are as players at 19 and judge me then I guess!!
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