Advice to Assistant Coaches

Here is some advice Chris Boyd ex Sharks Super 14 Coach & Wellington NPC:


"As an assistant it is VERY difficult to get personal balance when you don't agree with the philosophy of those pulling the strings

Always think problems to solutions

Control what you can control

Debate and commit ( you need to do this in private not in front of players )- keep challenging but be aware of the coach not wanting to be challenged and will begin to find your questioning mind an irritation

Whatever the coaching group decides even if you don't agree you need to commit to - cant speak out against other coaches - PROBLEM - find the solution - ( you may just have to bite your tongue and publically agree)

Best way to control your destiny is to be a head coach if you are working with somebody else be a GOOD TEAM man and use the opportunity to grow your coaching."

Very wise words!

Great Defence Drill

Came across this little gem of a drill by Scotty "Razor" Robertson last night will try it out at training tonight. Already thought of game plan related progressions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aKpjBN2GyU

Wayne Bennett Pearls of Wisdom

Listening is the art of communication

Don’t lack confidence, The stand is full of those

Coach lesser teams for upskilling

No pay off for potential, only results

Demanding of things they think they are incapable of achieving

Telling a player he isn’t good enough,balanced by telling him he did everything possible to be successful.

Age is not a factor. How much are you prepared to give. Desire, dedication,enthusiasm

Isn’t it amazing how much can be accomplished when no one cares who gets the credit

There are no great men, only great challenges which ordinary men are are forced by circumstances to meet

Accept criticism and disappointment as part of life, and when it comes, stand up straight, look at it in the eyes & say you cannot defeat me. I am bigger than you

Don’t die with the music in you

Winners make commitments, losers make promises

Sooner or later, everyone sits down to a banquet of consequences

Success can shatter confidence because of expectations, and recipients begin to change things about himself

If you haven't read his book, go get it today!!! Wayne is a mastermind of coaching and continues a legacy of greatness!!

Colin Cooper Quote

Here's a Boomer from 2010 Hurricanes Super 14 Coach Colin Cooper:


"It's all about the team and it's all about discipline, picking the right players and weighing up ability versus character. It's also about playing the right game plan and surrounding yourself with good people who can drive that."
Colin Cooper

Players Assessment

Yesterday we started our first part of our build up to North Harbour Under 18's 2010. North Harbour have been running a skills academy for under 15 & Under 17 players for the past few years with a focus on upskilling these players to feed into age group rep teams as they will be eligible for two years in the age group. We started our identification process yesterday with a 2 hour Player assessment workshop that consisted of the following:

Fitness: Yo Yo Test You can see an example of a yo yo test at this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nwYx62e2VJI
Passing Assessment
Running/Commit Defender Assessment
Defence
Ball into Contact
Support Play

The Assessment puts each player into a situation where we can view players performing the skill in game related situations. We had a large group of 34 players and to assess each player meant we had 4 different coaches assessing and rotated the players in mini units.
I was looking after Running Commit Defender Assessment and here is the breakdown of what we were looking at:

Ball Carrier Commit
Controls Position
Eye Contact
Running Lines, "Y" lines
Change of Pace-Pull
Split Vision
Controls Defenders
Decision to pass
Timing of pass
Stays Involved

Support Player
Positioning (depth)
Scanning
Controls Defender
Finds Space
Timing
Running lines, "Y" lines
Adjusts for support

each player was looked at on their left side and right side and rated on a scale of (3 best - 1 worst)

The interesting thing when you break it down to the fundamentals a theme became apparent across the player base and you start to see the areas that trainings will need to be focused from the "get go".

Skill testing is an area often overlooked as a "not enough time" or "Takes to much resource" scenario for coaches. I personally believe this is a critical factor to the blueprint of our planning as coaches. If you want to play a game based around using the width of the field but your passing as a unit is not there or Playing a confrontational game but players unable to "win the contact" at the collision area it will become a battle to achieve game plan. To me skill testing is an essential part of assessing your team profile and vital before planning game plans!

Some Great Quotes

Here a couple of quotes I came across the last few days:

"The Six W's: Work will win when wishing won't."
-- Todd Blackledge

"The difference between failure and success is doing a thing nearly right and doing it exactly right."
-- Edward C. Simmons

"The harder you work, the harder it is to surrender."
-- Vince Lombardi

"You can't make a great play unless you do it first in practice."
-- Chuck Noll

"It isn't hard to be good from time to time insports. What is tough, is being good every day."
-- Willie Mays

"Adversity causes some men to break, and others to break records."
-- Source Unknown

"Make sure that team members know they are working with you, not for you."
-- John Wooden

"Leadership, like coaching, is fighting for the hearts and souls of men and getting them to believe in you."
-- Eddie Robinson

"What makes a good coach? Complete dedication."
-- George Halas

"Every game is an opportunity to measure yourself against your own potential."
-- Bud Wilkinson

Off the ball work

Off the ball work - This to me is one of my focusses in our attack play and something if you want to make the most of your attack all players must provide. Although we often focus on the ball carrier when watching games it is often the guys outside and inside, running support lines, making defence take notice that create the space for the ball carrier.
The off the ball work is a thankless job generally but teams that work hard on this aspect of their attack play seem to have an abundance of two things:
Time & Space! These two things are some of the most critical factors in execution of quality attack ultimately resulting in tries!!
Think back to how often we see wingers standing on their wings gazing down the sidelines, waiting for that overlap that will be provided by players inside of them.... This is a pet hate of mine and a real focus for my coaching of the backs this year. My focus for the next few weeks is to "sell" the off the ball work to our backline in all facets of attack! This off the ball work may consist of teh following: Communication, Dummy Running, dragging opposite to create space, support and basically everything and anything to manipulate space for our team to attack!
A chap I have coached with recently summed up the game we love so perfectly and simpily:
Rugby is: TUBS
Them
Us
Ball
Space

You make them think more about us, maintain control of the ball and attack the space!

League Drills

There is a lot that can be pulled from Rugby league in the use of Phase attack around rugby, the off the ball work, block running and support lines constantly ask questions of defence. This drill I came across on You Tube forces teh ball carrier to make a decision about attacking space.

View the clip here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BJOMcmZyt4&feature=related

Mental and Physical training

Here's an interesting clip I came across on You Tube with work they are doing at the International Rugby Academy in South Africa:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KgpQ9w_ECpw&playnext_from=TL&videos=NZ-wdEfn82o
We are just at a planning stage for our under 18 representative team at the end of the year and interested to know if anyone else has some material about quality team building exercises incorporating physical and mental training?

Oldie but a goodie

I filmed some footage of top skills coach Dave Rennie taking some of the players in the advanced Players course at IRANZ through an "Old school" backs drill. I now use this frequently in my warmups with backs and forwards as it gets the guys switched on, organised and ultimately they enjoy it!!

You can check out the video here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SwxKhc5xIY

Jeff Wilson

Jeff Wilson All Black legend and now backs coach of North Harbour attended one of our trainings recently and observed and added some simple insights that I found quite interesting.


Catch the pass early: Jeff wanted to see players with their hands turned into the player passing the ball rather than receiving the ball whilst drifting. His reasoning behind this was that if you receive the ball early you have more chance of holding the opposition, where receiving the ball whilst drifting tended to take your opposite with you.

When you think about it this is something that is often overlooked but is so critical in the execution of backline moves!

Flat backline phase attack: Off the ball work has to start from the outside to create space for the ball carrier.

All to often especially in phase attack players tend to "run tram lines" and this results in lost opportunity. If the outsides work hard off the ball, space will open up!

I came across this You Tube video of Jeff Wilson talking with Josh Kronfield on how to beat a man 1 on 1. Some good insights:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3tDaq26AlI&playnext_from=TL&videos=A_6GRgxHwt8

My Rugby Stats

In August I was introduced to the people behind www.myrugbystats.com down at Murray Mexted's International Rugby Academy. At first I was a little unsure of what it was they were doing but I decided with the start of a new club season to try out there site.
So far I think it is great, perfect way to communicate with your team and keep a track of stats, plus updates like photos, videos etc. There is also a mechanism to keep stats although this is an area I would like to see a few more options that could be quite beneficial!

I firmly believe the rugby players these days crave feedback and like to track where there rugby is heading and sites like this provide a great resource to meet the needs of these players!

Check out our senior firsts teams profile at the below link:
http://www.myrugbystats.com/team.aspx?id=c492c807-65b3-476c-b1e8-52f417531f4a