The best thing we can do is coach and coach well

Roarers, most of you seem invested in rugby. I’d say most of you have played the game we love. But have you all coached?

This is a call to arms. If you haven’t done so already I call on you to get out there and coach next season. If you are already coaching I call on you to strive to be better.

Improving the Wallabies will have more to do with you being a coach as it will with you contributing to The Roar.

If you are thinking of coaching obviously there is not a single perfect approach.

I think as a starting point you just need to be true to who you are as a person and let that filter into what you are about as a leader. You can’t try and be someone you’re not. If you’re a bit of a joker let that be part of your philosophy.

Your philosophy needs to include knowing your players. You need to know which players respond positively to individual public criticism and which demand a quiet word. Above all you need to know when your players need to let their hair down as much as when they need a good hard slog on the training paddock.

You need to take note of those players doing extras. Are they doing extra fitness on the side, extra kicking practice, extra skills, and if so are they doing too much?

But extras are not all about rugby. Doing extras includes a player’s personal or social life. I will guarantee that Michael Cheika knows which players are having a coffee or a beer with a teammate that needs them to lend an ear.

A coach needs to measure the person not just the athlete. If you coach children you’ll know that after a pre-season and a couple of trials, most of them will generally be fit enough to play and any lack of skill will eventually be fixed, provided they keep coming to practice.

From my experience even a good indicator of their worth as a player is how they treat their mum. Are they disrespectful to her and do they treat her like a servant? Because if they are a spoilt brat off the field then when push comes to shove on the field they will certainly not hold strong.

If the alternative is a respectful child, one that is polite to his mum and insists on doing the little things that help, they will be selfless on the field. They are the ones that will do what is best for the team in the moments of pressure that decide a season, even if that involves burying themselves head first into that all important ruck that you needed to win, or tackling the opposition’s star player into touch to win the game.

You as a coach will have bred success through making the correct selection if you generally select the better person. This will all count for something for rugby in this country.

In saying that if you come to realise a junior player is a bad egg then do not give up on them. Embrace them and explicitly teach them what they should be doing. Give them as many chances as it takes and do not expect them to be an overnight success.

If you coach men you need to know how responsible they are to help determine their value as a player under pressure. Are they spending time with their loved ones when they need to be? Are they attending to their duties within their home? If not encourage and inspire them to do so.

I read this year Cheika had created a culture within the Waratahs where they all had a personal goal to help them improve as people not just as a rugby player. For one player it was to rebuild the outdoor decking at his home, for another it was to walk from Central Station to the SFS everyday instead of taking the bus. This innovative philosophical strategy helped create the right men within the team’s culture to breed success.

If senior players are deemed to be bad eggs you must not automatically give up on them either. Unlike juniors, there is a limit to how many chances they should get but that depends on them as individuals. Kurtley Beale is a player that needs guidance not a proverbial stick.

A coach also needs to be innovative, particularly if the skills of the players are good in order to stay ahead of the game. For example, technically the Wallabies have all the skills they currently need so Cheika needs to come up with an innovative skill set to give us an advantage. Forward interplay seems to have worked well at the Waratahs this year so let’s expect to see more of that type of innovation.

And don’t let the old fuddy-duddyies tell you that players today are not as skilful. The so called golden era matches of the 1980s were, if you take the time to watch some of those amateur Tests, complete and utter rubbish.

There simply used to be one or two of the risky flicks that went to hand that created moments of exhilaration, which usually led to easier tries with feeble cover defence. Let’s not forget these were the days where most forwards hit most breakdowns and if by some miracle the ball got recycled for a second phase there were much more open spaces with half the players lying on the ground.

There is no such thing nowadays, with most coaches coaching less numbers in the breakdown. The facts are there were more scrums, more line-outs, more kicking, less passing and less ball in play than there is today. There are no lessons to be learnt from those supposed ‘good old days’.

Indeed good coaches look at the future and do not spend much time thinking of the past through rose-coloured glasses. The game has changed and anyone with an up-to-date coaching qualification will tell you as such.

As a coach you can improve strengths or weaknesses by creating innovative games at training that involve skill development. But do not ignore activities that simply create character.

I remember reading about the Saracens coach in England, who realised his players had all the skills and fitness to be successful, but no sense of responsibility on the field. He felt this was related to the fact that they had everything handed to them on a platter as professional athletes.

So one pre-season he had them all fly out to relatively remote destinations on mainland Europe with nothing but a passport and a certain amount of cash. They had a couple of days to make their own way back to London by any means they could, apart from air travel. Like an episode of TopGear, players hiked, caught trains, buses and ferries to race back. The perennial underachievers went on to win the premiership.

I would love for the Wallabies to be flown to Lisbon or Copenhagen for next year’s World Cup and told, “Here’s your passport and 250 euros. See you in London for a team meeting in two days”.

A few players may never be seen again, but the majority of them would be forced to man up and take charge of their own destiny. No excuses. Make it happen. I’m sure that would manifest itself onto the field.

A good coach does all this and more. They connect with players in a healthy way.

My personal philosophy as a coach is centred on positive interactions, something I adopted about a year ago.

I feel I have gained the greatest relationship I could possibly have with my charges. The players I coach are performing better, but more importantly the players seem to be enjoying themselves much more and getting along with me, their coach, a helluva lot better.

Whether it is a definitive ratio or just a general philosophy, a coach’s job is not to chastise players into submission. It is to nurture their confidence in themselves and their coach.

Whatever you do you must never forget what it was like to be a player because you need that to be a huge part of your philosophy. If you have never played at any level, I really don’t think coaching is for you, but of course there are many examples that prove otherwise.

I just think if you didn’t play you may not be able to hide from your lack of experience with the technical aspects of the game or the tactical. Perhaps you could get involved in management instead.

It’s okay to have confidence in the upcoming 12 months for the Wallabies. Without going as far to predict a world championship I am happy to go as far as to say we should expect much better performances. We have the athletes and we are about to get the right coaching philosophy.

Take note Roarers and let that inspire you to get out there and coach and coach well!