Comparing coaching philosophies between codes in Irish sport

During my recent trip to UK and Ireland following attending ICCE Global Coaching conference, I was extremely fortunate to catch up and discuss coaching philosophies and ideas with some of the top GAA Football and rugby union coaches. I was lucky to catch up with:

• Brian McIver, current Derry director of football and former Championship winning coach
• Frank McLeigh whom looks after all Down Emerging Talent GAA sides among other sides
• Cormac Venney whom is both an Elite Inter County GAA coach and offers Sport Psychology support for Ulster Rugby Academy sides
• Willie Anderson, former Irish international second row, assistant coach of Leinster and Scottish national side; currently coaching as part of Ulster Rugby Academy structure
• Sigerson Cup winning coach with St Marys Belfast, Paddy Tally whom has previously coached GAA senior sides including 2003 Championship winning side Tyrone, 2010 finalists Down and Derry
• Matt Wilkie; current Head of Coach Development at Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU)

Some of the main questions and areas I wanted to look around included different tactics and methods for athlete engagement in different sports and ways these high-performance coaches offered autonomy supportive methods and ways to develop players while developing their own practices in elite atmospheres.

Sitting down first with Brian, Frank and Cormac, we discussed the recent stats provided by Club Players Association addressing player dropout (see one of my previous blog posts), talking about how players have changed, creating a necessity for improved player-coach relations and changes to traditionalist ideas to occur. As I posed ideas including acknowledging the challenge of successful coaching is recognizing social interactive dilemmas within individual and team goal setting and development, offering suitable scenarios and choices with all members’ involvement and collaboratively dealing with matters as opposed to eradicating them, they called upon examples faced within high performance amateur sport such as player's professional and family lives and the supportive, flexible roles they must adapt to support different circumstances.  These high-level coaches all acknowledged the importance of coaching the individual, recognizing players as a person and all eluding to autonomy supportive practices and expressing elements of self-determination ideas for player engagement and involvement in decisions for sports practices with Cormac mentioning ideas from Google's supportive and inclusive ideas and his application into sporting atmospheres.

As mentioned, I was fortunate to shadow Willie Anderson, who allowed me to question methods and reasoning for choices made in live sessions. Again, like previous coaches, I found him to be extremely athlete focused and autonomy supportive to player decisions and actions. He frequently used questioning and player involvement for decisions in his drive to make players "warriors as well as winners". He discussed the importance of delegating to other coaching staff and players; he echoed like I regularly mention to the players I coach, "once they step over the paint, it is all down to them", supporting them to make decisions and drive player autonomy for how and why they play. He drew upon a document drafted by former National Coach Development Manager for IRFU, Stephen Aboud, talking about the importance of creating a positive environment for the players to grow and constantly reviewing his own performance through a 360-degree process, addressing abilities to plan, align plans and empower.

On having a coffee with Paddy Tally, I again was immensely caught up in his passion for coaching and desire to share his beliefs and understand ideas from other sports and practices also. One of the most powerful quotes offered when speaking of entering a new yet highly resourceful county side was:

If they want coffee, give it to them black...no sugar, no cream; let's see how much they want it.

At first, it came across as quite an authoritarian approach; however, akin to all the excellent coaches spoken with over the past few weeks, he showed he was trying to remind players of their passion and drive like when they initially adopted the sport. Similar to Eddie Jones' beliefs displayed at ICCE Conference, he wanted them to embrace the professional attitude towards training with the amateur's ideals of enjoyment and love for the game. Paddy talks about the "buy in culture" he assists developing through encouraging genuine friendships within the teams he's involved in, supported by a culture of honesty among all those involved. He also encourages greater player autonomy and engagement through functional training and scenario based sessions and games, developing player's decisions under pressure while encouraging them to play, chase and win the game, forever learning lessons throughout.

Discussing similar areas with a person in charge of coach development, I was fortunate to discuss ideas and applied strategies with Matt Wilkie. We discussed how we felt coaching within different hemispheres had become very content based and how he was implementing ideas to offer a greater focus on coaches for how they coach and why for greater impact among players of all capabilities. Introducing and applying principles such as cueing (language), constraints based coaching and ideas from Basic Psychological Needs Theory, whereby coaches and players alike understand the concept of evolved psychological needs and their relations to psychological health and well-being, predicated on autonomy, competence, and relatedness, which shall offer greater understanding for higher levels of commitment for game involvement for coaches and players alike. He discussed ways in which he could create avenues for coaches to turn to and progressively discuss ideas and practices through communities of practice and online techniques and strategies to break down traditionalist ideas and coaching rigidity within rugby union.

Combining these discussions with high-performance coaches in Irish sport alongside notes from presentations in Liverpool's International Council for Coaching Excellence conference, there is a definite acknowledgment towards player awareness and autonomy alongside tactical periodization where coaches and programs are structured to meet both player needs and sports expectations. But, in my opinion, where are possible areas of improvement for coach adaptability and learning opportunities? One immediate avenue of opportunity would be the introduction of communities of practice between sports; gathering ideas, effective adopted practices and even cross code reviews to develop understanding and add value from other avenues. I believe we have become very content focused and over analytical towards how we believe and perceive players within team sports SHOULD be played, coached and reviewed. However, with this, we have lost the concept of acknowledging the social and interactive side to coaching; offering ideas, choices and solutions to scenarios which may be sport applicable or just socially responsible when required for all players and coaches involved to collaboratively overcome and improve.

How does this resonate in your sport currently? I'd love to hear your thoughts towards this article....

Eddie Jones: Awesome hotdog salesman

"Coaching is like selling the same hotdog to a player everyday and telling him it's good for him; you just need to change the sauce or topping for them"

Eddie Jones delivered as expected for the opening of ICCE Global Coaching Conference 2017; insightful, challenging, direct.

An insight into his personality started prior to his keynote; introducing himself to many senior delegates at ICCE Conference and trying to probe for their background to see if possible to extract some information from them, displaying his passion for learning and development.

He drew upon often his most recent coaching posts within both Japan and England national sides. He described how he developed team leaders within Japan national side by conducting coach-less meetings and allowing them to fail plus adding extra training sessions to give them "ahead start" whilst trying to create an "amateur spirit among the players and learn to enjoy training again".

He spoke of some of the adopted practices from Japan had been introduced to the English national side, most notably introducing a game model and tactical periodisation to their preparation. He and his coaching team ensures they train frequently above game intensity and place themselves under the pressures experienced during games while adopting "functional training" practices, seeing players making decisions more regularly and working under fatigue with S&C coaches and rugby coaches working in conjunction together.

Jones described how we need to adapt as coaches, understanding how our sports are currently played and practices of other sports. He described how our role as coaches is to "make players uncomfortable, to make players grow", continually making the players to think for themselves or make decisions as part of a group and act independent from coaches. He touched on our ability as coaches to "offer accurate feedback and enthusiasm on the run", something I have discussed previously within rugby union circles. I believe we as coaches need to address our current fundamental purposes in the game; understanding the needs of players as individuals, ensure players basics skills are addressed and developed while expanding their imagination and motivation to succeed within the sport, points which were echoed in Jones' keynote.

Our necessity to continue to learn and develop as coaches were summed up in a couple of quotes by Eddie Jones during this address:

Don't be afraid to look at things without the bias of tradition. It takes courage to think differently.

You never "arrive" as a coach...you never "become" as a coach

Thanks for sharing Mr Jones and thanks to ICCE Conference for organizing a great start to the conference.

Player dropout and the GAA player crisis

This week I am based in Ireland in preparation for ICCE coaching conference in Liverpool while combining visits to Ulster Rugby academy, IRFU in Dublin and catching up with age grade coaches involved in GAA football, all trying to understand how their coaches strengthen coach-athlete relationships and continually engage their players. An interesting article was forwarded to me regarding reported raised concerns from GAA and Club Players Association concerning player drop out rates and hurling fixture calendar. Liam Griffin, the former All-Ireland winning Wexford manager and executive member of CPA, made reference to the 2013 ESRI report, 'Keeping Them In The Game', which revealed dropout rates in GAA were 75% between the ages of 21 and 26 in football and 60% in hurling and camogie because of lost interest. He praised the work of the GAA in fostering interest among young people, but said the issue of large numbers dropping out of the game at adult level was a "crisis", pointing to the irregularity of fixtures.

Could this increase in player dropout be as a result of athlete burnout due to extended seasons, uncertainty of fixtures and transition between competitions? Athlete burnout results from “chronically frustrated or unfulfilled basic physiological needs” (Cresswell, 2006) and “denotes a negative emotional reaction to sport participation” (Gustafsson, Kenttä, Hassmén, & Lundqvist, 2007).  Radeke (1997) identified the main symptoms of athlete burnout syndrome, which results in player illness, injury or most applicable for my research and this example, dropout. These symptoms are emotional and physical exhaustion, sport depersonalisation or devaluation and a reduced sense of accomplishment. Thibaut and Kelly (1989) recognized burnout as “a consequence of chronic stress and exposure to a point where unfavorable cost-benefit ratio for sport engagement”.

Deci and Ryan recognized the basic physiological needs as autonomy, competence and relatedness or connection to others. Satisfying these basic needs shall “foster self determined motivation” (Hollembeak, 2005)  and has been associated with “higher self-esteem, higher task engagement and lower anxiety” (Deci, 2001), reported as a problem with these players having seen 24,000 join the CPA due to frustration with fixture list. However, athlete intrinsic motivation is not the only reason for lower levels of athlete dropout; Lonsdale’s research found autonomous extrinsic motivations, such as integrated or identified regulators, also resulted in lower levels of athlete burnout. Therefore, ideas such as players being able to express a sense of themselves or achieving personal valued outcomes within better defined periods of the season could be areas to increase athlete engagement to sports or reduce levels of dropout from sport if adopted or encouraged.

Athlete devaluation to sport, regarded as “perhaps most cognitive of burnout dimensions” (Lemyre, 2006), has strong links to lack of autonomy (such as feelings of choice and self-directedness in sport development) and competence (perceptions of effectiveness in sport or team). Lonsdale’s research also found greater or stronger links to devaluation through lack of autonomy. Are GAA hurling losing club players entering into their investment stages of sport participation as they feel there is less choice surrounding fixtures and scheduling or lack of perceived accomplishment in club atmosphere?  In a rugby specific study, Cresswell and Eklund found that “reduced accomplishment and devaluation featured most prominently” in their research, alongside finding that athletes needs satisfactions were impacted by reduced sense of accomplishment and sport devaluation, similar to other research.

What can the clubs and coaches involved try and do immediately to stop the loss of players and keep them engaged and involved in football and hurling? Emotional support and perceived efficacy in hurling involvement are areas coaches can assist for prolonged athlete involvement, retention and engagement; this could include ideas such as cultivating personal involvement with players, offering two way communication, utilizing player input and understanding player’s feelings (Gould, Tuffey, Udry, & Loehr, 1996). Cresswell and Eklund (2006) also found concepts such as enjoyable challenges within rugby, open and free communication with coaches and management alongside few or flexible responsibilities outside sport allowed and encouraged player engagement and reduced burnout or dropout. Coaches and administration staff alike should take note from previous qualitative investigations which found attributions to burnout symptoms included pressure to comply and perform in elite environment and transitions between competitions or stages in season, which added emotional and mental stress, highlighting another strong reason why GAA should address the fixture scheduling and try stopping the loss of young adult players.

How do high level coaches create a highly creative and competitive atmosphere?

How do coaches in high performance atmospheres keep team players motivated? Before we look at an excellent example within rugby union, let's remind ourselves of earlier research around this area. Results from Pope and Wilson’s studies showed athletes who perceive coaches to be supportive of decisions, provided with clear feedback concerning goal pursuits and engage with them in genuine and empathetic manner report greater need fulfillment, more self-determined motives and more perceived effort in sport (J. Pope & Wilson, 2012). Supporting this, Vallerand and Mageau’s research has shown that intrinsic motivations and self-determined extrinsic motivators are necessary ingredients for athlete’s optimal function (Mageau, 2003). Deci and Ryan’s research investigated that intrinsic motivation is experienced as consequence of feeling competent and selfdetermined. Intrinsic motivation leads to greater persistence, improved performance and enhanced well-being in a physical setting. While intrinsic motivation stems from innate physiological need of competency and represents the prototype of self-determined behavior, self-determined extrinsic motivators, which are extrinsic motivators which have been internally rationalised with oneself, become activities which are being carried out as are important and concordant to one’s values (Mageau, 2003). It has been researched that changes to people’s perceptions of competence and self-determination (relatedness and autonomy) should increase intrinsic motivations and player identification while decreasing introjection and amotivation (Pelletier, 1995). Self-determined forms of motivation also result in optimal behaviour, resulting in peak performance and persistence (Deci and Ryan, 2008).

Therefore, coaches need to offer autonomy supportive methods through involving players in decision making and goal setting for all team aspects, allowing opportunities for initiative and provide non-controlling feedback to allow players to feel competent in their sport and confident in their choices. This should develop self determined and motivated athletes who in turn shall invest greater effort, report higher levels of concentration, be more persistent and ultimately perform better, based on previous research by Mageau (2003).

Eddie Jones and his England staff continue to use their vast imagination to help come up with ways for England to acquire knowledge and increase their intelligence collectively as well as individually.

"They (rugby players) need new ideas and variety to grow. If you keep doing the same thing, you won’t improve. Underneath the physicality is the importance of players making intelligent decisions. Whether they have the ball in their hands or the opposition do, they have to make a decision

“Each week we try and do something different,” he said. “Whether that be in the schedule structure, training content or the way we present information to the players. In training, we create situations where we don’t tell the players the purpose of the game as we want them to work it out for themselves and very quickly adapt

Allowing players to take initiative and greater control of what they do shall offer better understanding of why they do it. Offering greater levels of player involvement in decision making and coaching content shall also allow coaches to focus on dynamic coach-athlete relationships, noted as the foundation of coaching. Effective coach-athlete relationships address empathy, honesty, respect and support, which shall in turn be holistic in the growth and development of coaches and players alike.

While Eddie Jones has adopted this to an elite level, we as coaches should sit back and look at how we can ensure we are offering and developing some of these tactics in our age grade, grassroots or senior level for the improvement of our practices and player development.

Wallabies identity being lost to supporters and grassroots rugby alike

Multiple reports this month has seen Wallabies distancing and being distanced from Super Franchises and grassroots clubs alike. From Super Rugby sides being blamed for player fitness coming into Wallaby camp, Brendon Cannon's calls for professional players to be more or consistently involved in club game and Dean Mumm, president of RUPA, calling for changes to competition structure and costs before reducing playing pool and rugby interest of an entire Australian state (VIC or WA STILL to be confirmed), system centralization is a hot topic mixed within all these areas. However, is centralization with current lack of coordination and communication the issues OR is Australian Rugby suffering from lack of identity and integrity from bottom to top? Where have these issues of identity arisen from? Previous research places meaning and purpose in the very heart of identity (McAdams, 1985). Acknowledging and integrating goals, roles, needs, skills and inclinations into suitable working scenarios shall help create an evolving narrative for who we are and who we want to be as a collective unit; in this case, as the Australian rugby community.

The ARU released their strategic plan quite a few months ago now, covering strategies and plans from 2016-2020, taking of areas of "making rugby a game for all", "ignite Australia's passion for the game", "building sustainable elite success" and "create excellence in how the game is run".  With increased participation in 7's and Women's game,  development of age grade game for sustainable success with passion pouring from all corners, albeit regarding Wallaby demise in recent tests, many aspects are being worked on yet excellence in how the game is run is certainly an area needing addressing.

Brendon Cannon came out and made a great statement, which would allow all players, administrators and supporters alike remember one of their desires listed in the strategic document; everything we are involved in is to "increase emphasis on grassroots and club rugby" to ultimately assist "success for the Wallabies, seen as most important outcome".

Sew the same “Australian Rugby” badge on every single rugby jersey in the country. Boys and girls. From under 6s to the Wallabies to the Australian women’s sevens team. How powerful would that be? We are all in this together, no matter your age, gender or ability. We are one community.

Kids would love the fact they have the same thing on their jersey that Israel Folau or Charlotte Caslick does. Up goes a poster and there you have a rugby kid locked in for life.

One community. Identity. Integrity. From bottom to top.

Attending the Australian Rugby National Coaching Conference in Brisbane last week, Mick Byrne talked regarding skill acquisition and how currently we are "coaching the game, not coaching the players". While he was discussing this at an elite level, he echoed this was being done at clubs and schools across the country also. The skills we are instilling in our players is as a result of behaviors and experiences from club and school coaching, including their attitudes and aptitudes to change. Therefore, if we want our Wallabies to play "entertaining and exciting brand of rugby", a goal outlined by supporters in the ARU document, the responsibility starts at our thriving grassroots working with our senior players and coaching group as a community of practice, who share concerns and passion for player development, learning how to do it better as they interact regularly and upskilling these players with meaning and purpose of generating more and better Wallabies in future.

All involved parties having harmonious passion towards rugby should be positive and result in understanding of importance of the game's development while not over whelming each other’s identity. An equally or unequally obsessive passion towards the sport can show positive signs for direct commitment to development of rugby union yet shall result in externally regulated motivations taking control. High quality relationships, which are optimized by harmonious passion, should result in higher subjective well-being within involved stakeholders within the rugby community. Therefore, whilst frustrations with ARU and Wallabies recent performances have been displayed, previous research and the plan drafted by the Australian Rugby Union has offered the rugby community some building blocks of specific goals which we need to integrate roles, needs and skills into situations which shall help identify who we are and who we want to be as a community.

One community. Identity. Integrity. From bottom to top.