A NEED FOR SPEED- A COACHING PHILOSOPHY
I have coached rugby for 20 years and it's been an interesting journey. So in 2017, I was challenged by reading Win Forever, the autobiography of legendary Seatle Seahawks coach Pete Carrol. Carrol was fired three times as an NFL head coach before becoming the University of South Carolina Trojans head coach. He turned their football programme into a National Champions and was one of only three coaches to win both national championship in College and Pro football.
So his challenge was have you got a philosophy and have you written it down? So I read Total Rugby form Jim Greenwood early in my coaching journey, and it was an awesome book to stimulate my thinking and philosophy, but I never articulated it into words. So the above picture was my effort to put my philosophy into words.
#Dare2Care the building block of my philosophy is to care for all players, I ever come in touch with. As coaches, we often just want to push the players to the next level performance wise, that we forget we working with young men that also have unique challenges in life. It has become a mission for me to really try to build good honest relationships with all my players. Allowing them to grow and to serve them with my skill set and technical ability. Always willing to stay at sessions to assist in individual skill development. Creating a framework for leadership and personal development.
#Love the fight to prepared. As coaches, it is paramount that we get to the practice prepared. I have a PREPARED acronym (read the article on my LinkedIn profile). Pressure is part of the game, as coaches, we have to handle that pressure and take the pressure away from our teams. If we don’t love the challenge, to prepare and we let it get to us were in the wrong game. Push the players to the next level on the field. Care for them of it. I truly love the challenge to analyse the opposition and then prepare to beat them.
#Enthusiasm Wins, the best hour and a half of a schoolboys day is the rugby practice, if the coaches aren’t enthusiastic and passionate then the boys won’t respond and be engaged. As coaches, we have to challenge ourselves to make practice fun and enjoyable, this will lead to energy and a big effort from the boys.
As coaches we often worried about the X’s and O’s of the game and the result, are we aware of what the players want?
We need to find the key that will unlock our team's ability to connect and play for each other. So in 2002 my second season coaching at a small school, we weren’t performing to expectation with an experienced side. Walking to the warm-up I told my assistant coach maybe we must tell a joke before warm up and allow the players to warm up like the soccer teams with singing and dancing. In the first twenty minutes that day we were leading 25-0 and went on to record a comfortable victory. The previous year's disciplined approach did not work with that group of players, and I learnt a valuable lesson that every team is slightly different and without compromising your culture & values, you have to unlock the key for your team to connect. I hope this article will challenge coaches to get your philosophy written down, and challenge you to find the key to unlock your teams true potential.
Look forward to sharing in future on team skills, attacking and defensive systems.
Rugby regards
Andre Tredoux #Dare2Care #Lovethefight #Enthusiasmwins