When you are young and decide to start a new sport, it is accepted that you don’t know much but you can be coached as you have time on your side. I know Rugby is advertised as a sport for all, however if you get to a certain age, do clubs and coaches have the time to train you?
I would like to say yes, however I do not feel this is true. When someone new turns up to training and are in the 25 plus age group or even older, we do make assumptions and believe that because they are that’s age they should know what they are doing. There have been a number of players that have wanted to take sport up in the later years of their life. However when researching into this, some sports class 21 year old being to old to start playing. In rugby clubs these days, you expect players to know what they are doing and if they don’t you have them do what the other players are doing so you don’t waste the precious training time you have. Coaches very rarely stop and coach the basic to older players that have just started.
When does winning mentality take over the let’s play for fun aspect of the sport?
A coach posted on Facebook last week, a saying stating that enjoyment should always be first and a player with a smile on their face is all a coach needs to see. Then began the number of coaches commenting underneath stating that this is their philosophy, they can’t believe coaches that don’t follow suit.
This make me think, at what team age does a coaches mentality change from lets just play for fun to we must win, win, win? Is it Under 12’s, 13’s, 14’s 15’s. 16’s or colts??
When we are young it is all about the taking part, having fun and doesn’t matter if you win lose or draw. It’s about playing rugby with all your friends and that’s it, there is no pressure. When does this pressure start and who actually starts it? Is it the parents of the players or the coach that needs that win to say “I am a good coach” or is it the players themselves wanting the win.
Reading these comments I know for a fact some of these coaches if their team lose, make sure that next training sessions is one of the hardest and the coaches are in a bad mood. Am I one of these coaches? I will hold my hand up and say yes sometimes I was but learnt quickly that to create a team,it is more about the bond and enjoyment rather then winning.
When I was a younger coach, I actually started with the seniors teams and winning was everything to me- I had to prove myself, I had in my head that if we lose, I will lose players or the respect from them. I was that bad that if we lost I had to sit in a corner of the clubhouse away from everyone for a good 30 mins to calm down and think about things. Then suddenly, I started helping out with the mini and youth section and that changed. Since starting the business and working more in primary and secondary school, I have changed my mentality to make sure kids enjoy the rugby so we can attract them to a rugby club and continue their journey. That’s when I created a Under 15’s team from nothing and first thing we did was beat our locals by a good score. However that didn’t last long as we had only played rugby for 3 months while other teams have been together and played for 7 years at least. But our team every week got better but lost, some players left that didn’t see the bigger picture of next year but many players stayed due to the team spirit we had. As I said though a few players left as we were losing most weeks, so jumping back to the topic, instead of coaching changing their philosophy, could we say it’s a certain age of a player when they turn around and decided winning is everything?
