The Holistic approach

Set genius free

This week the wise and honest Guru talks about coaches and their pet theories - and about the importance of recognising genius and setting it free to fly off a platform of basics.

It is true of nearly every coach I have met that he has his own favourite theories concerning the game and these theories he will force on his side. I, for example, am known as a coach who insists that the ball moves wide. Another who coaches close to me in the same stable, will always play up the middle of the field through his forwards and he will ruck it up-field until he has drawn in enough of the opponents to make it worthwhile to move the ball down the backline. This, in modern rugby jargon, is known as the "patient" approach to the game.

Were I to approach this coach about his method, he would give me very sound arguments in its favour and, indeed, I have seen how effective it can be. The game is coached today, generally, in a very methodical way. When you teach young children at school, you do start with basics. You learn the alphabet, for example. In rugby, too, we learn its alphabet when we start the game. One thing the kindergarten teacher knows full well, though, is that if the children do not enjoy what they are doing, they will soon lose interest and learning will be retarded as a result of the lack of fun in the lessons.

Normally, somewhere on the way through school, however, most pupils begin to find all this education a bore and a drag. The fun goes out of it. Is it the fault of the teacher or of the syllabus? Perhaps, neither. It may be that the pupil has only himself to blame. I well remember a lesson one of my university professors gave me when I told him that the reason for my inattention was that I found his lectures and the subject dull. Acerbically, he replied: " Sir, there is no such thing as a dull or boring subject- there are just bored people." I am not very bright, so it took me a long time to work out what he meant; I believe I, at last, understand.

I have found after many years in the classroom, teaching, among other things, poetry (which, after all is, or should be, akin to rugby) that in the main it is, in fact, the subject and the teacher who are boring (the teacher makes the subject boring) and only sometimes the boy although, there are indeed some lads who are insensitive to the finer things of life and however exciting, joyful and stimulating you try to make your lesson and the subject, you know you are bound to fail where he is concerned. Nevertheless you try, hoping for the flash of light that will kindle the sensitivities into the flame called enlightenment.

Now, if you have a rugby player like that, tell him to go to find his enlightenment elsewhere - on the hockey field, perhaps, for the rugby field is not for him. It should be for only those who have passion in their veins, those who revel in physical and mental challenge of an intellectually and physically brutal kind. That is part of the reason that you see rugby players and boxers embrace their opponents after their matches. They have been pushed to such physical and mental limits that their respect for one another cannot be shown in mere words but must be expressed in terms of a physical game, through touch.

As usual, I begin to digress and am, no doubt, becoming boring. What is my point? It is simply this: the coach must make rugby exciting, joyful and stimulating for his players. That is why he is called coach and not manager; that is why I call myself a schoolmaster and not an educator or even a teacher (it is my belief that a mere teacher or educator deals only with subjects while masters deal with both subject and pupils). You see, as much as the subject is important, even more so is the person who is learning the subject. If he has joy in studying it so will the subject have joy.

I believe that in everyone one of us there is a touch of genius somewhere. The art of good coaching/teaching is to find and release that genius. In most cases it refuses to come out by itself and it needs encouragement to do so. Good coaches are catalysts.

Therefore if you limit the game for the players by imposing your selfish and smug, restrictive pattern on it (emotive stuff, I apologise), then you are guilty of restricting something most precious in man- his genius. And, that is a sin!

It was Alan Jones I think, who realised that in the Wallaby side of some few years ago he had genius in the Ella brothers, in Simon Poidevin and others and you know what he did? He encouraged genius, he did not limit those players by imposing a restrictive pattern born of a fear of losing. The result was one of the great rugby sides. Somewhere else at some time else, no doubt, these players had schoolmasters and coaches who taught them the A B C of rugby and perhaps it was they who enkindled this fire in them or encouraged it, having recognised it. If so, bless them. We desperately need more of them.

I have been fortunate enough to have come into contact with much genius in my coaching and my teaching life which has gone on to do great things: some of my pupils have written wonderful anthologies which have been published and some of the players have played at International and Provincial level but I did not make them! The genius was there and I recognised it and encouraged it - but, I repeat, I did not make them! Who the hell do I think I am that I can teach a rugby footballer of the calibre of Ella? The genius of such players is far above mine. All I as a coach have to do is to help the player recognise his own talent and then allow it to be freely expressed.

We coaches overrate ourselves; we attend courses, pass exams, go to and give lectures and then we think we know everything. We coach sides of genius and then fall into the trap of thinking we are geniuses, too - geniuses, furthermore, who know everything there is to know about rugby.

Coaches who limit the game by imposing restrictions on it, restrict the genius of their players, too. Yes, you must learn how and when to ruck, maul, scrum, lineout, tackle, receive and give kick-offs, kick the ball, support and so on. This is the A B C of rugby - the basics and you can play quite a good game on basics alone and often win, too. But surely the basics are there for you to build upon. Just as I might teach a boy to write a sentence and then a paragraph, eventually to write a story or a poem, hoping that one day he will become a writer of note, so I should teach a rugby player his basics and lead up to more complete things, more finished productions, hoping in the end that he will produce magic on the rugby field. Rucking is a basic. Do not make basics the be-all and end-all of the game. They are only the beginning. The poetry of the game comes from the movement of the ball to players who have the genius to deceive others with their dancing feet and their sleight of hand. The basics are there to win us the ball and to win as good a ball as possible. The real game starts after that.

You have to be really good at your basics to play a complete game of football. Not any side can do it. Some sides or coaches get stuck at some point along the way and never progress beyond it. Are you one of those?