'Tis The Season to be Coaching
Posted by Keith Wilkinson | Date created 2010-02-18 08:57:54
February still has snow on the ground and a chill wind. Thoughts of playing Rugby outside the gym are still just shadows in the memory. However, some of Ste-Anne’s coaches are already hard at work, and sacrificing Valentines Day to attend coaching clinics and update knowledge.
The coaching clinic is a large affair called "Coaching the Coaches" and it is held at the Royal Military College in Kingston. Well over 150 coaches from Quebec, Eastern Ontario, Toronto and GTA, the USA and western Canada were in attendance.
From Ste-Anne’s, John Lavery, Lee Bieber, Bobby Austen, Mandy Mongeau, Jessie Matiuszuk joined Lindsay Hunt, once of the Montreal Barbarians all made the long drive. Also seen at the conference were Gary Peacock, now head coach of Women’s Rugby (the Vikings) at St. Lawrence College in Kingston and Keith Wilkinson. And, while Rugby was holding its workshops, another group of coaches was busy at the College with a separate soccer conference under Canada Head Coach Steven Hart.
In the morning, the Rugby workshops examined some of the theoretical aspects of the Game, all under the rubric of coaching a dynamic "moving game." It was hard not to be impressed as we sat in the brass and wood splendor of Currie Hall, surrounded by gilded wood and paintings of famous Canadian generals. They would have been pleased to hear the lectures on defense and attack and the need for initiative and decision-making.
John MacMillan, General Manager of Sport Victoria BC began by giving an interesting overview of Styles of Play, the need to master each of these and how they may be used to manipulate the defence.
Peter Bagetta, Assistant Director of Rugby at Penn State University, then looked at coaching principles and defensive philosophy, arguing that players need to be aware of the concepts of what they are doing before they try to practice it.
Star guest coach Pierre Villepreux of the FFR, then looked at the Collective Game, using videoclips of children playing and international player splaying to illustrate his thesis. As he showed children will run until they find a way around the defence - "a door". International players will do the same (or at least they should!)
Lunch was with the student cadets in the mess hall - there was plenty of choice but the food was redolent of boarding school! Not that this seemed to have any effect on the cadets - fit young men and women anxious to keep up their caloric intake.
In the afternoon, the workshops left the cozy confines of Currie Hall and moved to the Anderson field house, a magnificent facility inside what appeared to be an an aircraft hangar. Guillermo Gulli of Argentina and Beaconsfield, Quebec, ran a popular session on Building Basic Body Position, while RFU Head of Coaching Development, Gary Henderson, looked at Continuity: Merging the Tactical and the Technical. In the space of half an hour he had the players seeking the "doors" in the defence and seeing how to breach the defensive line. Jessie was a willing volunteer coach to assist in the coaching and did a great job.
Last workshops of the day saw John MacMillan talk about: What Not to Coach, Lynn Evans, RFU Coaching trainer, examined Empowering the Experienced Player, and Pierre Villepreux moved back to Coaching the Collective Game.
At dinner in a local hostelry the coaches from the Mississauga Blues met with the coaches of the Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue RFC and put final arrangements together for a Jamboree of Rugby between the two clubs in Quebec next Spring. The tour will be reciprocated in 2011.
But the evening was not yet done. The coaches of both Clubs returned to the Coaches' Social in the Four Points Sheraton hotel where break-out tables were set up for the presenters. Participants now had the opportunity to work with, and talk to, the experts one-on-one. Even later still, the coaches assembled to discuss the finer points of all that had been learned and to sample the large number of Kingston establishments that serve beer.
The final day Sunday, began bright and early at 9:00 am. Peter Bagetta demonstrated the practical application of all that he had taught in his theory session. Then Villepreux took the stage to examine "Coaching the Backs Game." Finally, Gary Henderson examined Continuity again and Merging the Technical and Tactical, and Villepreux looked at coaching the Forwards Game.
Interestingly, the common theme of both clinics was that Rugby needs to be a more dynamic game. Players need to be able to make decisions about where and how to attack and how to manipulate the opposition: they need to produce lightning quick ball and a ruck or a maul is a sign that play has broken down and the attack has failed. Now we just need to coach to this!
The weekend sped by, and the breadth and depth of the coaching sessions will probably only be fully understood when the coaches have time to review their copious notes and master the central coaching themes. Fortunately, there is plenty of winter left for the task.
