The innovative rugby coach
John Schropfer challenges the way you think about the game.
Innovative rugby coaching can motivate players, excite them and, with good execution, make your team more successful. It can also improve skill levels.
Put into practice, innovative coaching can liberate your team's playing style, whilst inhibiting opposition defences. But innovative coaching methods and plays need to be applied appropriately.
Be open minded
Accept the unacceptable. Is your team prepared to perform the same moves in your half as it would in the opposition's half? Can your team line up in completely different ways in the backline, no matter what the weather conditions?
Tighten up your players' rugby skills
The individual skills list is long and each element can always be improved. But if skills have not been honed, innovation will grind your team to a halt. Knowing what you can and can't do may simply be a case of trying it out in training.
Be ready to reject any ideas that your players struggle with now, but look at the reasons for this. You can then go back to the training park, work on the skills weaknesses, and return to these innovative ideas at a later time. What might not work this week, may be honed in three months' time.
Individual rugby skills for innovative teams
- Evasive running - side steps, swerves, changes of pace.
- Passing and receiving - quick, efficient and accurate.
- Correct decision making - tactically aware and able to react quickly.
- Support - players move to be able to receive a pass or support the ball carrier in contact.
- Contact skills - ball into contact, offloading, mauling and rucking.
- Defensive - organised and able to tackle in a number of different ways, and then compete for the ball on the ground.
- Pace, power and fitness - well conditioned for the type of game you want to play.
Tactics and techniques
Give your players the technical and tactical tools in equal measure, because one without the other will not lead to good execution.
Technically a player should have a range of rugby skills available. You can hone these on the training pitch, but players also need to learn where and when to use the skills.
As a rugby coach, you can empower your players to make tactical decisions. Give them lots of rugby drills and moves, and let them play them. Mistakes and successes will soon enable your players to understand what works for them.
This self-discovery can be innovative in itself, and your players may find solutions you had not thought about yourself. A good rugby coach can then reinforce all the positive outcomes and deal with the negative ones.
John Schropfer is the Welsh Rugby Union Regional Community Manager and a former assistant coach of Wales.
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