Filed under: Dan Cottrell, Rugby Team Management | Tags: Better Rugby Coaching, coaching development, development v winning
When you are building your team, what are you striving for?
There are two things I want. First, I love winning. And first, I want the players to enjoy their rugby in the long run.
Er…that doesn’t make sense or always work together. Development versus winning is constant battle for many coaches.
The clever rugby coach can have both. If you are at the top of the tree, you have to. You may have to compromise development to win, but you still need development. You can do this by the rugby drills and rugby skills you coach.
You have to enjoy what you are doing. You have to be amongst friends. That is where it is worth drawing the line on winning and development. Be with players who share your vision and lose the players who are in it for themselves, even if they are the best player.
Filed under: Dan Cottrell, Rugby Coaching, Rugby Training | Tags: coaching development, LTAD, LTPD, player development, rugby coaching aims
Coaching across all the age ranges gives you a good view of how players develop.
It is exciting, scary and frustrating.
If you have been on the coaching courses, then you will be well aware of the Long Term Athlete Development programme, or Player (see my debate on coaching players not athletes).
What the programme does tell you: build the level of competition gradually through the formative years so players pick up the skills.
What the programme does not tell you: you will come up against teams who ignore the programme, play a “winning” version of the game, don’t rotate their players and just give the ball to the big fast kid.
In these circumstances it can be tough to keep to what you believe in, if indeed you believe in development. My sense is that most people who read this blog fall into the development category, though are pretty competitive all the same and want to win more than they lose. I don’t see a problem in this. It is harder to lose and look for positives than win and have regrets.
Your priorities are tougher to define, because they are not based purely on results. You should have aims though. And those aims must be threefold.
Firstly, you should have a personal ambition. Where do you want to see yourself as a person in three to four years time. Your personal development is fundamental to what ever coaching you do.
Secondly, you should have a long term “team” ambition. That shapes how you train and prepare your team.
And lastly, and perhaps most difficult to implement because of the time involved, an aim for each player. Just saying that “I want every player to be able to pass of both hands by the end of the season” is too general. Players develop at such different rates that you need to have flexibility.
If you can work on the last aim, then brilliant. The second aim is probably already fixed in your mind. So your rugby coaching priority should be YOU and what you can do to improve.
Filed under: Dan Cottrell, Rugby Coaching | Tags: coaching development, Ospreys, Rugby Coaching, Winston Churchill, WRU
Let me start with some good news in rugby coaching.
With all the appointments for the new season flying around, internationally and domestically, perhaps one great appointment has gone under the radar.
One of Better Rugby Coaching’s editorial advisory board, John Schropfer, has been made the new national coach development manager for the Welsh Rugby Union. The role means searching out and nurturing the best coaching talent in Wales, so the next Welsh coach is indeed Welsh.
John is one of the prime movers in the UK coaching development circles and a key part of the coaching courses produced for Welsh, English and Scottish coaches. His energy and vision will invigorate the development process in the Principality.
Coaching development has been ignored for too long
Coach development has long been overlooked by the most important people in rugby.
