Not so 'Smart Rugby': Putting the Australian coaching education system under the spotlight

Snape, truly incredible. Thanks for the article. Bring back a latter day Dick Marks for heaven’s sake. A fabulous contributor to Australian Rugby as Australian coaching director was Dick. Surely there is someone with his vision and nous around.

Coaching was a focus of the technical advisory committee, formed in 2020: https://amp.abc.net.au/article/102918550 Perhaps Phil Waugh could let us know more about the status of the committee, what’s been achieved/implemented and where it goes from here?

Thanks Piru. I think even this shows the differences in so many scenarios here. The Clubs should be pushing all new coaches to get onto resources etc. But not many would. Certainly, my child's club did not and have not ever in the last 6 years he has played there.

Hoy I found this an interesting comment as I know my son's coach (u6s) was new to it this year, and noticed he was running off a plan for each training session. RugbyWA seems to have a lot of resources on hand, including webinars on how to use what is provided by RA - might be worth a look if you have newbies?

Adam, great to know about the resources, but they are not pushed at all. The resources should be "MUST USE" for developing children under 12 (plucked out of the air). When I started, we had something like 20 "No mistakes drills", and we did them up and down the field, over and over. It then became second nature... "Run inside ball", and we would all line up, and run it perfectly. "Run outside ball..." same. And they translated to game situations. When I was a senior player at club many years later, and we would do warm up drills, over half the players 10+ years my junior didn't have these skills, because the specific drills had stopped. Why was the national coaching curriculum that existed in the early 90s dropped? Implementing something now, will need a minimum 10 years before we see a difference, but it must be done soon.

This is my bug bear. Huge issue as I see it. I am a passionate ex player... I have young children, and I have both coached, and witnessed other parents coaching my son and his team. In their most formative years, where skill implementation and development is SO important, there is no set drills offered to coaches... no directions on what to coach, what to look for. Nothing. Even as the article says... nothing to determine how to problem solve. "We got belted at the ruck last week, so this week we will focus on... XYZ drill...". There is nothing on offer to quite possibly, very inexperienced parents at community clubs coaching entry children. Nothing on offer to help either the parent coach, or child improve. There needs to be a national coaching alignment, a national coaching curriculum, set drills for set ages, positions etc.

One of the big failures in the current qualification system is that it doens't recognise nor develop 'managers and leaders'. Most head coaches at the highest levels (super/french/premier UK rugby and intl rugby) oversee a team of technical coaches (forwards coach/backs coach/scrum coach etc). Its a team effort. To be a good premier grade coach you need management and leadership skills plus technical coaching ability as you have a smaller team and need to contribute a lot of your time on the technical side. But beyond that... management and leadership becomes the major factor to team success IMO. The most successful coaches in the world i.e Macqueen, Woodward, Jake White, Henry etc at their peak were great leaders and managers with a team of coaches under them. They had technical knowledge also but they had a team around them. The best current coaches Robinson, OGara, Farrell, Galthié are all leaders and managers with high emotional intelligence and people skills. EJ is not a great manager or leader and his technical coaching skills died at the 2003 WC... ever since then he has tried to be an 'innovator' and visionary but often failed. His success with England was on the back of Lancaster's team and getting Japan up for a pool game v SA B team. What the Wallabies need is a leader/manager head coach with great assistants.

The coaching day arranged privately which coincides with the January/February Super Rugby warm-up matches weekend in Northern NSW sounds like it's a really good event. Has anyone in this thread been to that and can comment? Part of the success of the Ireland system is a robust coaching institution, with clear pathways and robust content. It also has an audit fucntionality intrinsic to the program, and the things that the audits look at, are changed from year to year to mirror how the game of rugby changes, and how the curricuum content and coaching skills and knowledge change also accordingly. I suspect (but haven't heard) that there probably are auditor debriefs, validations, and assessments. There's a lot of layers and a lot of costs, but this is what professional management does. Who sets the budget, that there are but 20 places available? Who is the decision-maker who decides that this bottleneck is suitable, adequate, and effective at fulfilling Australian rugby's long-term needs?

Good article. I'm a junior coach at my local club, having coached my son's team for two years of U8's, then through to U10's this year. I've done Smart Rugby, Foundation and Level 1 courses (as a side note, Level 1 is required in our competition to coach from U12's and up). As you've described, the Level 1 doesn't really have a pass/fail component, but you do go through practical exercises. There is a lot of information in that course and generally available from RA, but it is largely on the individual to seek it out and at the end of the day, we're all volunteers who have day jobs. I have sought out more in order to keep the kids engaged and not get too stale as well as a genuine desire to see them do well, but there's only so much energy and hours in the week to give. There has been a focus on coaching the coaches in recent years which has been good and appears to be driven from NSWRU, but it's pretty limited in its scope to a few sessions a year.

i'm beginning to suspect that intelligence and Australian rugby cannot coexist, even in the same sentence.

Check out the age games on STAN and you will see the same errors(e.g poor, aimless kicking, bad handling, lack of support play) as we do at Super Rugby and Test Level. Something is missing at the junior levels.....could it be coaching?

As a coach for juniors though I have to say that hub is terrible, I get more from watching and joining NZ rugby sites...

A very good article and very relevant to my own son who has been coaching now for about 8 years and is at prem level and has been knocked back from doing his level 3, no reason was given. He has aspirations to coach at a high level and has been highly commended by his clubs that he has coached at and by present and past players. He is now quite disillusioned with the current state that he finds himself. He has indicated that he is frustrated and is now losing interest in furthering his coaching career. This is the problem facing young aspiring coaches that may have some talent, there seems to be a brick wall installed so that only a very few get the chance. And every day we see articles written that we are so short of coaches at a high level. I can't really see how this is an intelligent way of nurturing home grown coaching talent.

great article.

Was thinking the same JD, a comparison may reveal the shift in our declining culture.

Thank you very much for this article Snape, possibly the most pertinent I have read on the Roar. Being able to skip Foundation and level 1, may help explain the lack of basic skills development in some of our players. It took a number of years for the Wallabies to demonstrates pass and follow through ( I still remember this being a highlight of their PR shots when they started doing it, and the comment that it’s not easy to pass accurately when in full flight). This is from our “elite” players. Until now, I have not been able to understand the lack of focus on other basics, such as ruck attendance and technique, that has permeated the Wallaby set up over the recent years. The hard yakka and boring, but incredibly important aspect of the game. The aspect that the top 3-4 teams have all but mastered. I remember Deans’ comment that a number of Wallaby players were unable to pass left to right properly, and that was about 15 years ago. This system does not address the deep-seated ‘who you know’ culture of rugby in Australia. It’s incredible that only 20 % of level 2 applicants, get the chance to progress to level 3 each year and that some ex-players without experience, are a shoo-in. An ideal environment for a club for the boys environment to thrive. This explains a heck of a lot, but unfortunately, I wouldn’t hold our collective breaths for this to change. If this data and info is raised in the up-coming review process, it may not mean much, as I doubt it will be made public anyway, much like the last review wasn’t. RA and transparency are not really a thing.

Excellent informative article with sound analysis. I hope that it gets the attention that it deserves. It would be interesting to compare this to the early 90s.

Whilst your comment about Level 2 being an entry point may be correct (I have no way to confirm it), if you are serious about coaching, you start with Smart Rugby, Foundation and Level 1. Any Club (or School) that is serious about the sport and their players should have their coaches do these courses. Rugby Australia does also have a coaching hub that provides free resources on everything from coaching juniors, women and Pacific Island players, to pre-season prep, unstructured play and position specific training. What is concerning is the progression from Level 2 to 3. Coaching, be it paid or voluntary is to be taken seriously. If someone wants to progress, and they have the evidence that they have been successful, they shouldn't be held back. Alternatively, if they haven't done the foundations, are treating the course as a box ticking exercise, the parent union should say no until they have done these courses and demonstrated a level of success. If there ever was an argument for centralisation, this would be it.

Thank you Snape. Good to know there is so much interest that the courses are over subscribed- that’s the best thing I’ve heard this year, as far as rugby goes.