No More Johnnies, Please

Imagine being a rugby player (Lawd knows, I've tried)...

... Imagine playing at division 2 level (ohhh, the heights, the dizziness). Imagine having a person in the club who would, on Tuesdays, work on your game with you, one-to-one, possibly passing you onto a specialist coach for kicking or propping or... I don't know, chuckin' it straight and true into a lineout. Whatever. Imagine 45mins a week of focussed development.

Imagine, the player progresses, fulfils his or her potential and plays at a higher level and the amount of player development coaching increases in detail and frequency. The player improves yet more. I can't help thinking that we should be doing more of this in Wales.

Yes, the academies are doing some of this but so many players are: too old, develop at an older age (physically or mentally), find the Glorious Sport late, move areas or just have had a bad early experience with coaching. Now, if we start to increase the number of skills coaches we should improve the techniques and skills of our player base.

I was chatting to a football coach about the difference between skills and techniques; he suggested that a technique was a physical ability to do something but a skill was the ability to apply that technique under pressure in a game situation.


Now, sports nomenclature or skills semanticism may or may not be your thing, but we need more of whatever it is the hell that lot means in rugby.

Ken Braxton says a technique needs repeating up to 4000 times before it becomes instinctive. I'm not suggesting we all need to become Johnny Wilkinsons, Dear Sweet Potatoes, I'm not, but we do need to make the players we've got coming through ever more skilful.


Bulk is great but skill is massive, blue, massive. My ever-outspoken brother Julian always encouraged his players to learn to kick with both feet. I hate to agree with him, but now and again I'm forced to. We need more skills coaches. Not Julian, by the way - he would drive you nuts. Nor do we need over-coached coaches; if someone has got the basic and specific knowledge, they should be encouraged to develop their own style, be they a player or a coach. (Long Live Lyn). Small thinkers should be called trainers not coaches. And trainers always stink after a workout.

Mentoring* would be the thing just below international level. Now I know Pips would disagree, but Jonathon Davies would be great. Alan Bateman, for all his reserve, would be superb for a quiet, unassuming, unostentatious-but-skilful centre (like Henson, perhaps), in acting as a quiet influence to reassure, cajole or bollock as the case may be.

Make the individual better and the team benefits; there may be no 'I' in TEAM but there is 'ME...'

So, come on WRU, more skills coaches, please.

*Wendell Sailor# perhaps chose unwisely in asking David Bishop to be his mentor rather than Mark 'Hugs Not Drugs' Perego, but this should not count against the argument.(#allegedly)