Blog: Thinking Games, Successful Learning and Games Based Approaches to Coaching

By Sam Page, St Mary’s Lecturer in Sport and Physical Education at St Mary's University, Twickenham. When my wife asked me what we were likely to be doing for Valentine’s Day this year I replied that I would be “spending a romantic weekend with 50 Irish rugby coaches in Dublin.” My response met with the expected frustration but also some bemusement, “why Dublin, why rugby and most of all why Valentines?” The St Mary’s Centre for Coaching first embarked on this particular consultancy project last November when Michael Ayres (Programme director on the Physical and Sport Education degree programme) was contacted, somewhat out of the blue, by Gerry Murphy from Leinster Rugby (most recently Heineken Cup champions in 2010/11 & 2011/12). It emerged that Gerry was Head of Coach Development at Leinster and was keen to develop the team coaches' knowledge of game based pedagogies in sports coaching. Gerry came across Michael through his prestigious work (2am Google-Hangout Conference calls mostly) as the British representative on the Teaching Games for Understanding International Advisory Board. After hosting Gerry (Irish international head coach 1991-1994) for a day in December 2013 at St Mary’s it was agreed that the Centre for Coaching would head over to Dublin and provide some Continuing Professional Development (CPD) workshops for Leinster Rugby’s elite youth, community and schools coaches, as part of their coaching development programme. Although confident about how game based pedagogies could be applied to Leinster’s specific coaching context, we were conscious about developing our rugby specific coaching knowledge. Subsequently Michael and I endeavored to immerse ourselves in as much rugby as possible over the months leading up to the trip. We observed various rugby coaching sessions, from those conducted by the New Zealand Rugby League team at St Mary’s during their World Cup campaign, to school sessions delivered at St Paul’s School in Hammersmith. We also met with various rugby coaches to discuss their thoughts around game based approaches to coaching. We had an interesting discussion with Simon Amor, St Mary’s alumnus, Honorary Fellow and current England 7’s coach. Simon suggested that the key to such an approach would be the ability to develop a technical base of skills within game appropriate environments. This preparation and insight helped us to provide workshops that, whilst grounded in our existing knowledge and experience, were also able to acknowledge challenges that were specific to the sport of rugby. Our visit to Leinster Rugby took place over Valentine’s weekend and after arriving early on the Friday morning we led some informal discussions with their elite youth coaches around approaches to coaching. We presented some ideas from current research and shared some of our personal experiences coaching within an elite youth football academy. Areas discussed included; technical development through games, success vs learning, cognitive overload, knowledge vs understanding, and thinking games. An interesting exchange of ideas took place and it emerged that cultural issue and expectations are challenges that are shared across sports when working in youth development. Over lunch we were shown around the facilities at Leinster’s training base at University College Dublin and discussed with the coach development officers how coach education works in Irish rugby. Interestingly, the approach adopted by the Irish Rugby Football Union (IRFU) is to disseminate information and responsibility for developing the ‘domestic’ (grassroots) game through the provincial clubs. This means that Leinster has a broad and open remit for the development of coaching within their region. Phil Lawlor, Head of Domestic Rugby, was keen to hear our views on their extensive programme, which is responsible for producing coach education programme, resources and CPD events. This informed our afternoon session as we welcomed Leinster coaches from the community programme who were responsible for developing both players and coaches at a domestic level. As part of the afternoon session coaches delivered ‘thinking games’ to some students from a local school. We organised for these sessions to be filmed, from two angles, one of which was a body camera (GoPro). In the concluding part of the days workshop the footage from the practical session was analysed and reviewed using studio code analysis software. This is a process that we often use with our students as part of Physical and Sport Education undergraduate programme. We have consistently found that this sort activity has informed good reflective practice and this certainly something, with which the Leinster coaches would appear to concur with and found very beneficial. Back at the Leinster training base we led some small group activities where the analysed footage was reviewed. Coaches discussed the creation and maintenance of optimal learning environments for developing both their players and coaches. After a highly productive first day and a brief phone call home to ensure the Valentine's card and flowers meant the preverbal dog house was no longer a problem, Michael and I were fortunate enough to be treated to some traditional Irish hospitality as guests at the Pro12 League fixture between Leinster and Newport Gwent Dragons. Along with 15,000 other die hard rugby romantics we enjoyed a Valentine’s treat as Leinster cruised to a victory by 31-19. On Saturday morning we conducted another coach development workshop this time with the leading schools coaches that work within the Leinster province. The dynamic relationship between Leinster and the schools struck me as interesting and fairly unique to rugby. It was very apparent that it was key for Leinster Rugby to build strong relationships with local schools as this proved to be a vital element of the domestic game infrastructure as well as a site for the development of elite youth players. Topics discussed in the workshop were similar to the previous day with greater focus placed upon how games based approaches to coaching can develop; positive motivational climates and socialisation through sport. Although we feared that this might be the group of practitioners where we met most resistance to our proposed approaches to rugby coaching, we were pleasantly surprised by their engaging and enthusiastic response. In summary the outlook demonstrated by the schools coaches typified the two days for us. It was refreshing to have worked with such a forward thinking group of coaches, teachers who were so keen to engage and interact with us and our presentation of current research related to games based approaches to coaching young athletes. After our Valentine’s weekend excursion the St Mary’s Centre for Coaching is very keen to build upon our newly formed relationship with Leinster Rugby. We hope to invite some of their innovative coaches to St Mary’s to continue to share in some ground breaking coaching practice in professional youth rugby.