Over the years the RFU mantra on coaching has flipped between aiding player discovery and getting technical, several years ago whilst attending a course I was criticised for being overly technical. Fast forward to a month ago and I was advised that I wasn’t technical enough.
Now I had changed my coaching style significantly to accommodate the previous mantra, at the time I had taken the criticism quite personally without really appreciating the point of it. Fast forward a few years and when the criticism was levied again, I had a lot better understanding of what was being said.
Now I do appreciate that coaching doctrine does change from time to time with whoever is considered the leading light at the time, and certainly there are individuals within the game who have a lot better experience than I do and are also a lot more creative than I am. I would also point out that the qualities of the athletes certain of these individuals have worked with are at the top end of the sport. I also think it is important given my own experiences that I state that anything you do at the top of the game is transferable to the lower levels, it might just take a bit more time and patience and a little bit of creativity in how you deliver the sessions.
But the fact remains our sport is highly technical. Every facet of the game is littered with areas that require technical competency. Just looking at passing highlights. There are so many different types of passes and some are very situational. What amazes me is that almost every player now seems to be able to execute the spin pass, but ask them to execute a 2 yard pop pass and they suddenly struggle. With my recent experiences I have become very aware at how little players are asked to develop their skill sets, mostly because the players I am working with now are not bad players, they are decent players who have been badly coached, and there really is a difference between the two.
Decent players have the ability and desire to learn and improve, bad players don’t. It really is that simple, players come in all shapes and standards, the beauty of our sport is there is a place for every single person in our game.
Over the last six months I have become keenly aware that if you are going to try something a bit different that asks more of the players in terms of taking them out of their comfort zone, then you have to be able to get technical in your coaching sessions and be able to create situations and drills to enable players to put these skills into practice.
With the challenges that my forwards faced in the scrums this season, a bystander will have noticed how much more technical I have become during the course of the season. We have gone from self-discovery to becoming really prescribed on our techniques; we have had to breakdown every part of the players motion in building up to and through the hit and ball put in. Whilst I think we have solved the worst part of our problems I am already thinking ahead to the new year and starting to look at techniques that will take us from being a competent team to one that starts to get the better of our tougher and often heavier opposition.
As part of doing this I have to be incredibly technical, this is the one part of our game that the risk levels, in terms of permanent injury, are so high. Players lives are actually at stake, and I have to really be explicit about what the players need to be able to feel, sense and deal with to ensure that whatever I do teach them it is safe for them to actually do on the field.
But the technical aspects affect every part of our game, and it is possible to create scenarios that the players can enjoy and learn new techniques. This season I have gone from working with my hooker on his throwing motion (it is not in the arms contrary to popular belief), through to working with full backs on tackle technique, wingers on stepping, fly halves on decision making and so on.
It is my experience that we have to get more technical, if we want to improve players’ core basic skills. Pure discovery only works in certain environments when time is on your side and you have the right level of contact time with the players to be able to push the learning curve.
