Coach and the Modern Game

The Guru looks at the coach and his attitudes and efforts

This week our wise Guru looks at coaching and coaches, in particular, touching on three important areas.

What are your ambitions as a coach? Now that it has become, at some levels, a professional game, more and more young coaches have ambitions- they want to get into positions where they can earn money through the sport. Most First Division Clubs and even Second Division Clubs now will pay a coach and some schools, senior and junior, do the same merely because in most countries teaching is no longer a profession that attracts the young sportsman. Either the school lets the standard of its game deteriorate or it goes the pay way.

What makes a good coach? In most rugby-playing countries rugby coaching courses are run by the local union, examinations, both practical and written, are taken and certificates are awarded to successful coaches. Normally there are three grades of certificate and sometime there is a fourth, too. Certainly this is a good way to begin to become a coach although it is my experience that the possession of even the highest certificate is no guarantee of coaching ability. The only way to become a good coach is to go through the mill - you must have practical experience, plenty of it.

Of course, a rugby background is invaluable but the fact that you have played the game yourself does not make you a good coach. There has long been a myth, for example, that to coach at International level you must have been an International yourself. It does help as it gives you some status with the players but it is by no means a reliable yardstick. Many past Internationals make execrable coaches and there are, too, quite a number of International coaches whom I would not allow anywhere near my school side. I dislike their attitudes, their philosophies and their style of game and to be honest, I believe the modern International coaches are more managers than they are coaches. A good International coach surrounds himself with hands-on experts, something the ordinary coach can seldom do. The International coach organises; he decides what style, what ploys, what tactics, players, best suit that particular match. Then, too, he will make tactical substitutions in the course of a match. He certainly has much on his plate but more and more he becomes an organiser and less and less a hands-on coach.

If you wish to become a coach, get involved at school and club level and do not be a snob; coach any grade not only the top side in an age group or a club. There is no better way to learn. Although when you apply for an important coaching position you are expected to produce certificates, far more convincing is experience. Be humble, start small and then build up and pass your courses on your way. Be patient. Referee junior games, school games whenever you can, that gives you insight and here you begin to read games and teams, people - and you learn the laws. Do not hesitate to get experts to come and coach this or that aspect of the game - and learn from them.

Essentials: Your attitude - see yourself as a catalyst and not as the main actor. There is so much talent there on your field and much of it has been suppressed by circumstances, previous coaches, parental mishandling, a lack of self-belief. Your job is to understand all this, get to know each individual player, read him and then release in him all the talent he possesses and let it flow on to the field. Discipline, yours and the players', is essential but there can be the wrong sort of discipline that limits. Never, never run the ball from your own line ... is an oft-heard instruction, discipline. You may well excuse the instruction as being basically sensible and right in 80 percent, or so, of cases but you are limiting your players when you say that. You may argue, and I have heard the argument many times, that players want to be limited, they want to be told what to do in each situation for they feel, then, more secure, they have a framework. True but I believe this to be wrong. I am visiting my fears my doubts on to my players when I do this. Surely it is better to teach the skills, to teach a player to recognise potential in situations, to recognise when there is something on and when there is not - but reward him for being positive and do not reinforce the negative, safety-first, comfort-zone decision-making of the player who does the obvious thing by employing an easy option approach. The more often you take a chance, the less of a chance it becomes. I see rugby as a way of freeing youngsters from inhibitions; it is a sport where we are positive rather than negative - or are we? How many of us, coaches, visit our own sins on to our children (players)? Because I am a negative safety-first coach, so the 15 youngsters in my care become negative safety-first players - and that, in my book, is a sin. I always ask myself, "Am I teaching rugby or am I teaching Johnny?" Ideally I am doing both but first I am teaching Johnny; therefore I must get all that is good, all that talent, to function and I must teach him not to fear, not to be negative, but to believe in himself and be positive.

This attitude does not apply only to the coaching of young people at school but to the coaching of players at all levels, International level too. Unfortunately fear of losing inhibits coaches and thus players in turn. I cry every time I see someone I have coached being forced into a negative role especially at International level. Fear inhibits.

Dare to be positive. Do not inhibit others; as a coach it is your duty to release talent to be used positively to express the magic that lies in the soul of the player. If you dare to this your side will succeed as you will not believe.

Defence is important but attack is even more so. If your side plays negative, safety-first rugby that is because you are a negative, safety-first coach - a dull, boring fellow. You inhibit others and you have something to answer for because you are trampling flowers.

Unfortunately, at the moment in our rugby, the negative rules.

Dare!