Somethings can't be coached using games

You cannot escape the fact that Rugby is a simple game with technical demands. Therefore technical coaching is essential to developing well rounded, quality players.

Using games for understanding has been around since Rod Thorpe in the 90's and PE teachers through the ages, however they all had technical expertise within their skill set. Carwyn James, Graham Henry, Eddie Jones, Brian Ashton and Clive Woodward are just a few excellent examples of high achieving teachers who coached at the highest level. It is a myth to believe that these coaches only used games for developing players - they varied their practice, coaching style and delivery. Above all they were technical as well as strategists, always using context to apply rugby technical knowledge in a pressurised environment, therefore creating skilfull performers.

No matter how many games you run, if you do not coach the technical aspects correctly then the players will not have the technical development to apply in the game. I ran the last of a Level 3 Analysis of Performance CPD recently and I posed the following question about technical development: How can we analyse performance if we do not know what we are looking at?

I split them into 3 groups and asked them to list the Key Performance Indicators or Key Factors for each of the 3 technical aspects below. Collectively the group found 16 key factors in passing, 12 in tackling and only 7 in ball presentation.

 

From this simple task we found out a few things, firstly that there are a lot of KPIs that we as coaches need to be aware of and that there are gaps in our knowledge. If these gaps are not filled, how do the players develop past what we know? For example, in running a game it is evident that from the results above that as a group the coaches were confident in delivering a session on passing skills. However, their knowledge on ball presentation was going to give problems in player development - probably why teams are turned over consistently.

But how much knowledge is enough? How many templates of skillful performance do we need to know and at what depth? It is probably best to use a step approach, as you move up the age groups you will require more and more knowledge, better understanding of using constraints in games and using this knowledge to technically develop players.

This is what we will be exploring in the next article - where we look at the steps each coach should be taking as they progress through the age groups!

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