Speaker 1: Are you doing. Welcome to Rugby League Coach Podcast, episode
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty two. We're in season four of it.
Speaker 1: My name is Lee Addison. As you may know by now,
Speaker 1: I am the owner of Rugby League Coach dot com totau.
Speaker 1: I'm a coach mentor, I'm a coach educator, coach consultant
Speaker 1: and also an author. I'm a big water drinker and
Speaker 1: my water consumption is sponsored by the Global League Network,
Speaker 1: who you can find at Global League dot Network. I
Speaker 1: want to apologize about once again this podcast being out late.
Speaker 1: I promise it every Monday. Sometimes life just gets it
Speaker 1: the way. As I was traveling back from to Wumba
Speaker 1: on Saturday night after the work I do over there
Speaker 1: with a couple of clubs. Is two clubs that I
Speaker 1: consult for over there, and it's about two hours away
Speaker 1: from my front door and I'm so lucky. About ten
Speaker 1: minutes away from my front door. Oh sorry, my good
Speaker 1: friend's front door because he was in the car with
Speaker 1: me too, my tire blue. So if you listen, if
Speaker 1: you listen to a Little Warning, the Little Update podcast
Speaker 1: that's about five minutes long, you'll know this. If you've
Speaker 1: listened to the Super League three sixty podcast that was
Speaker 1: there on the Monday morning instead of instead of this
Speaker 1: podcast that you were explaining expecting. Sorry, you'll know this story.
Speaker 1: The tire blue, and boy did I do a good
Speaker 1: job on it. It was an absolute mess. I may
Speaker 1: I may upload it on the socials one day so
Speaker 1: you can see. Anyway, So I had to try and
Speaker 1: change the tire, and then of course the thing that
Speaker 1: the spanner that you use to get the nuts off
Speaker 1: the off the wheel. I'm sure they've got a more
Speaker 1: technical name the nuts, but put it this way. I
Speaker 1: couldn't grip onto the nuts, so we had to call breakdown.
Speaker 1: Breakdown came and towed my car to my friend's house,
Speaker 1: so it was stuck there and I got a lift
Speaker 1: home off my friend and then decided i'd work it
Speaker 1: out the following morning. Anyway, got in touch with well,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you who it was. It's Jim's. Jim's tires,
Speaker 1: I think they called. They're Australian Wide, so for anybody
Speaker 1: Jim's mobile tires, So if anybody needs tires, I can
Speaker 1: tell you now. These were brilliant. I got hold of
Speaker 1: them on a Sunday and then somebody called me from
Speaker 1: my locality and said, I'll check if I've got those
Speaker 1: tires right now, and i'll be with you this afternoon
Speaker 1: if I have. Unfortunately he didn't, but honestly within twelve hours.
Speaker 1: So on the Monday, my tires were sorted and I
Speaker 1: didn't even need to be there. He did them without
Speaker 1: me there because I was watching England play in the
Speaker 1: football in the soccer. So it's been a bit of
Speaker 1: a journey, right. So but all's well, that ends well.
Speaker 1: The tires are fine, and I guess I just want
Speaker 1: to there's two ways of looking at life, right. I've
Speaker 1: spent a lot on my car lately. I'm just trying
Speaker 1: to get this car to the end of the year basically,
Speaker 1: so I've been spending a little bit on it. If
Speaker 1: anybody wants to buy it, it's holding you twenty twelve
Speaker 1: if anyone wants to buy it. I bought it for
Speaker 1: when I was doing clinics a few years ago. But
Speaker 1: I've spent a bit of money on it lately. Knew this,
Speaker 1: knew that, and therefore a tire blowing a matter of
Speaker 1: six weeks since that happened. In terms of that expenditure,
Speaker 1: it would have been easy for me to go life's
Speaker 1: bad like this, I've got to be honest. I feel
Speaker 1: really blessed or whatever the term you want to use
Speaker 1: that in a two hour journey, I was ten minutes
Speaker 1: away from I was about fifteen minutes away from home,
Speaker 1: so I was able to get to get a toe comfortably. Secondly,
Speaker 1: the absolute easiness of the repair. I am choosing to
Speaker 1: look at this as glass half full. If that tire
Speaker 1: problem would have helped, would have happened. Listen, I'm saying
Speaker 1: I've said a couple of words wrong already. Let me
Speaker 1: just say this is how tired I am because I
Speaker 1: had to get up early to do so much today
Speaker 1: before England played today, so I'm all over the show.
Speaker 1: I'm going to wing this podcast. But I decided to
Speaker 1: look at this as if I was coming back from
Speaker 1: to Wumba and I ended up the tire blue on
Speaker 1: the bypass or something like that, which is a very
Speaker 1: isolated place at that time of night, also can get
Speaker 1: quite weather weather affected in terms of smogan things like that.
Speaker 1: That would have been a lot worse than ten minutes
Speaker 1: from home or ten minutes from sanctuary. So all I'm
Speaker 1: seeing is the positives, and I guess any coach or
Speaker 1: anybody in life can use that kind of kind of
Speaker 1: approach as well. So take from that what you will
Speaker 1: and apply it to whatever you need to apply it too.
Speaker 1: This podcast could go in all sorts of directions today.
Speaker 1: I've said to you many times that I am not
Speaker 1: one hundred percent convinced that I know how to plan
Speaker 1: a podcast properly in terms of getting it to an hour.
Speaker 1: I honestly think I've got so much this week that
Speaker 1: I might have enough content for next week too. But
Speaker 1: the first thing, let's talk about some coaching such Ower
Speaker 1: rather than Lee's Travis. But it is coming home by
Speaker 1: the way England, England won. Some players will never learn
Speaker 1: your game plan? Have you noticed that? Why is that
Speaker 1: this week's first segment, after Lee's vehicle travise, is about
Speaker 1: why our players might not learn our game plan. I
Speaker 1: was looking back through some old files recently because I'm
Speaker 1: writing a big document for a Queensland Cup club at
Speaker 1: the moment, and I came across my old master's dissertation
Speaker 1: from when I was at university in Sydney back in
Speaker 1: twenty ten. The title of it was does Knowledge of
Speaker 1: Learning Styles, learning Difficulties and differentiation within a rugby league
Speaker 1: team help coaches create a more effective coaching program. Sixteen
Speaker 1: years later, I think it's actually more relevant than when
Speaker 1: I wrote it because today we have GPS, video drones,
Speaker 1: coding software AI. We all still battle with whatever we
Speaker 1: put down as a coach, is it getting picked up?
Speaker 1: So let me ask you something. Have you ever finished
Speaker 1: training and asked your players? Does everyone understand that? Do
Speaker 1: you get that? Have you ever known a player go no,
Speaker 1: I'm done as shit. I don't know what you said.
Speaker 1: Twenty players tend to not, don't they. If you've got
Speaker 1: twenty of them, you might see one or two's eyes
Speaker 1: roll or go to the side and think, coach, I
Speaker 1: don't know, but I'm too scared to say, and then
Speaker 1: they play absolutely nothing like what you've coached. Every single
Speaker 1: coach listening to this has experienced that. This coach who's
Speaker 1: talking to you now has experienced this and still experiences this.
Speaker 1: For years, I used to think, well, the players mustn't
Speaker 1: be concentrating, or must have been listening, or weren't trying.
Speaker 1: But eventually I started to ask a different question, and
Speaker 1: that question was what if they weren't learning from the
Speaker 1: way I was teaching them. So when I did my
Speaker 1: first lot of research, I was coaching in England as
Speaker 1: part of the first part of the Matters, which I
Speaker 1: did in England, and we had a good side and
Speaker 1: organized side, detailed game plans, video written hands out, written handouts,
Speaker 1: training twice a week, classroom sessions. Yet players still misunderstood
Speaker 1: parts of the attacking system, not all of them, some
Speaker 1: of them. And then of course there's that whole connection
Speaker 1: between what you know mentally versus what you can carry
Speaker 1: out physically. So it fascinated me and I thought to myself,
Speaker 1: why aren't they getting it? And then I changed the
Speaker 1: question in my head to how are they trying to
Speaker 1: learn it? So I interviewed some players individually and asked them,
Speaker 1: not what do you think? I said, I tested their understanding.
Speaker 1: I drew things and said what do you think that
Speaker 1: means in terms of a play or in terms of
Speaker 1: a set, or what should that be called? Ask them
Speaker 1: what they do next? And sometimes I just mentally draw.
Speaker 1: I talk to them and explain the picture. Out of
Speaker 1: all the players who said they understood the game plan,
Speaker 1: but when I asked them to explain it, the difference
Speaker 1: between those two things were very different. Now we're not
Speaker 1: coaching players, so they can talk to a victory. How
Speaker 1: so keep listening. Some had it and were able to
Speaker 1: articulate it. Some were close, some had completely different ideas. Yeah,
Speaker 1: every player thought they understood and they never put the
Speaker 1: hand up when you said, everyone get this, and this
Speaker 1: kind of thing was you know, it wasn't just one incident.
Speaker 1: It was building up and build up. That was one
Speaker 1: of the biggest lessons of my coaching career, and therefore
Speaker 1: this research that I did. Every player learns differently. Some
Speaker 1: players love written notes. One who in one of the
Speaker 1: teams a coach should go home, read them, study them,
Speaker 1: come back better prepared. Another player told me he hated talking,
Speaker 1: just let me do it. Another one wanted more video,
Speaker 1: another wanted diagrams from play. Of my research, I found
Speaker 1: out one player was dyslexic. I think if I was
Speaker 1: to do that now, this would be up to twenty
Speaker 1: years later. You might find so many of your players
Speaker 1: have learning difficulties, he said. The written hand ounce meant
Speaker 1: nothing to him. Imagine if I'd have continued coaching all
Speaker 1: twenty exactly the same way. The reality is some of
Speaker 1: those players would have been disadvantaged. All the time, and
Speaker 1: it would have been nothing to do with their ability,
Speaker 1: but it would have been that I was only speaking
Speaker 1: limited coaching languages. So what I did with these players
Speaker 1: was give them a recognized learning style assessment, which I'll
Speaker 1: tell you about soon. And I found out that two
Speaker 1: thirds of the squad preferred visual learning pictures, video watching demonstrations,
Speaker 1: not endless talking from a coach right, and that changed
Speaker 1: everything about the way I coached. Training changed dramatically. I
Speaker 1: would sometimes delay training until we'd watched a video of
Speaker 1: either what they wanted them to do or what they
Speaker 1: did what they had done well in a previous game.
Speaker 1: Just to reinforce it, I brought in whiteboards and progressive diagrams.
Speaker 1: It was around this time that I started playing around
Speaker 1: with powerpoints too, and there was also a lot of
Speaker 1: question and answer, a lot more than they used to be.
Speaker 1: I also gave players permission to if they didn't understand
Speaker 1: a drill or a game that we were doing. They
Speaker 1: literally had permission and a few minute window where they
Speaker 1: could stand outside the drill or stand back from the
Speaker 1: game just to just to understand it. I encouraged discussion.
Speaker 1: I asked players to explain what I mean, what do
Speaker 1: I mean when I say good ball boys or whatever
Speaker 1: it may be? So instead of me talking all the time,
Speaker 1: players were more involved. I was able to after this
Speaker 1: bringing new attacking systems, players seem to understand it a
Speaker 1: lot earlier. Previously, another system that I think was even
Speaker 1: more complicated was all of a sudden happening a lot
Speaker 1: quicker than the previous system that I thought was even
Speaker 1: more simple. Every player preferred the new approach. The biggest
Speaker 1: lesson wasn't necessarily about learning styles. It was about the questions.
Speaker 1: Stop asking players if they enjoyed training and nothing else.
Speaker 1: Start asking if they understand it. Because there's a huge difference.
Speaker 1: Coaches massively overestimate player understanding. We might explain something once twice,
Speaker 1: then move on players. No decession continues. Particularly in England,
Speaker 1: they were freezing. But how often do we check and
Speaker 1: can that player explain it? Could they teach it somebody else?
Speaker 1: Can they recognize it? Can they recognize it in a
Speaker 1: game situation? Can they solve the problem that you're asking?
Speaker 1: Because that's football intelligence. And one thing I underestimated all
Speaker 1: those years ago was technology. Today, there's no excuse. Every
Speaker 1: single one of us carries a video editing suite in
Speaker 1: our pocket. Basically it's called a telephone. Well, it's called
Speaker 1: a smilephone. Make sure you legally can, but you can
Speaker 1: film every drill if you want. Every session can have diagrams.
Speaker 1: There is no reason why, whether WhatsApp account or a
Speaker 1: Facebook group that has been cleared legally, there's no reason
Speaker 1: why you can't send players clips before training, after training,
Speaker 1: on game day. We can personalize learning and training now
Speaker 1: more than ever before. If I was doing this research now,
Speaker 1: I'd probably measure different things such as decision making, video recall,
Speaker 1: positioning on the field, work rate at certain times, reaction times,
Speaker 1: small sided game decisions. I'd use AI video libraries, player
Speaker 1: learning profiles, but the central question would remain exactly the same,
Speaker 1: which is how do we help every individual learn faster?
Speaker 1: Pick three random players going ask them individually to explain
Speaker 1: either a session or a concept, and you'll be amazed
Speaker 1: by what you discover. And then the other thing is
Speaker 1: teach everything for different ways. Show it, explain it, draw it,
Speaker 1: or act it. Do it and I'll tell you more
Speaker 1: about this concept as we go through this pod. Told
Speaker 1: you I'm winging it, and we do it. Okay, though
Speaker 1: the more ways that your players experience learning, the deeper
Speaker 1: their understanding will be. Thirdly, get them to talk. Don't
Speaker 1: become the only teacher. Ask players to explain drills and
Speaker 1: concepts and game plans, etc. Get them to coach each other.
Speaker 1: The player doing the explaining the most is often learning
Speaker 1: the most. And looking back now, I don't think that
Speaker 1: this research was necessarily about what I thought it was
Speaker 1: the first half of it. At least there's about respect,
Speaker 1: respecting that every player is different. We've had different experiences,
Speaker 1: got different levels of confidence, different strengths, different weaknesses, process
Speaker 1: information in very different ways. Best coaches, in my opinion,
Speaker 1: don't know rugby league alone. They know how to deal
Speaker 1: with people, and we know they know how to get
Speaker 1: their players to run through brick walls for them. But
Speaker 1: I'm telling you this now, the more you learn about
Speaker 1: your players, you will become a far better coach because
Speaker 1: it's not about what you say, it's about what they hear.
Speaker 1: Every one of you also, this was the second part
Speaker 1: of my research. Every one of you has probably had
Speaker 1: several things to fix, So I'll give you one of
Speaker 1: the most obvious examples. Your team gets battered and they
Speaker 1: poor defensively. You feel that on the Tuesday training you
Speaker 1: want to punish them, for want of a better term,
Speaker 1: so that they don't do that again. Naughty boys, naughty girls.
Speaker 1: But you also realize that the players are battered and bruised,
Speaker 1: so how do you fix that? So the question is
Speaker 1: how do you improve your players when you can't train
Speaker 1: them anymore? Can players improve without training more? And this
Speaker 1: goes for every level of the game. Soundlous, doesn't it,
Speaker 1: because we've all grown up in this game. If you
Speaker 1: want to get better, train harder, train longer, do more repetitions.
Speaker 1: But I challenge this thinking as part of this thesis,
Speaker 1: not completely, but enough to know that it changed me
Speaker 1: as a coach forever. At the time of the second
Speaker 1: half of its head coach of rugby league at Saint
Speaker 1: Gregory's College, which is where nine national titles have been
Speaker 1: one over the years, one of the most famous schoolboy
Speaker 1: rugby league names in the world, and I had a
Speaker 1: player called James that's going my team. What we also
Speaker 1: had was half the team we're playing junior reps, so
Speaker 1: they were getting an awful lot of training at West Magpies,
Speaker 1: Balmain Tigers, Canterbury Bulldogs, etc. The others didn't play junior Rep.
Speaker 1: So if you imagine a squad of twenty I can't
Speaker 1: remember the exact number, but if you imagine a squad
Speaker 1: of twenty ten in REP ten not it was. I
Speaker 1: can't remember the exact numbers of players, but I do
Speaker 1: remember the two. You could literally cut them almost in
Speaker 1: half in terms of who was a REP player and
Speaker 1: who wasn't and back then, and I would imagine it's
Speaker 1: only got worse. The training standards required a lot of
Speaker 1: these NROL clubs when they were playing junior reps were
Speaker 1: through the roof. I mean, I had no room to maneuver.
Speaker 1: And I've told you before on this podcast that I
Speaker 1: had two training groups, Group one and Group two. Group
Speaker 1: one were the junior Rep players. They just had to
Speaker 1: do the team run on the Thursday every week. This
Speaker 1: is in pre season, not during the season. They had
Speaker 1: to do the team run every week, but to every
Speaker 1: other session native needed to help fill the water, putcorns out,
Speaker 1: et cetera. They could have that off, but they had
Speaker 1: to be there. The other half of the group, Group
Speaker 1: two were the ones that did my full pre season
Speaker 1: with me. So I had a coaching dilemma I e.
Speaker 1: How can I improve the players that I don't see
Speaker 1: for four of the five sessions I do in a
Speaker 1: week without burning them out, without creating more of an
Speaker 1: injury risk. And I was hopefully intuitive enough that I
Speaker 1: didn't want to overload players who were already training more
Speaker 1: than enough, and I actually started consuming as much as
Speaker 1: I could, again because I've done some of this before,
Speaker 1: but I zoned back in on sports psychology research and
Speaker 1: one topic to peering, and it's three ways of saying
Speaker 1: the same thing. Mental rehearsal, visualization, and imagery, the idea
Speaker 1: that athletes could mentally practice movements without actually performing them. Now,
Speaker 1: one of the stories that I always remember is a
Speaker 1: story about somebody who was in prison, and whether it's
Speaker 1: a fable or not, whether it's but it was. It
Speaker 1: was brought up in this book that I read. Spent
Speaker 1: life in prison every day just imagined going out to
Speaker 1: play golf on his local course when he got out
Speaker 1: of prison, and he kept imagining the perfect round, and
Speaker 1: that helped him while away the hours in the nick
Speaker 1: And when he eventually left prison, he went to the
Speaker 1: golf course and played something very close to the perfect round,
Speaker 1: even though he had not swung a golf club for
Speaker 1: however long he was in his Majesty's plague. You for
Speaker 1: elite performers talk about this, Olympic athletes, tennis players, so
Speaker 1: many other sports, but rugby league's always always had a
Speaker 1: difficulty facing this. If you want to know how important
Speaker 1: the mind is when it comes to sport, have you
Speaker 1: ever coached a team when they just don't mustle up
Speaker 1: because the opposition are bigger, or they're worried about the outcome.
Speaker 1: That's because we play a physical game, and if your
Speaker 1: mind is negative about the outcomes of you getting involved
Speaker 1: in that game, it will literally affect your ability to
Speaker 1: carry out your tasks. So the skill I chose was
Speaker 1: tackle tech because tackle tech isn't just strength or yeah,
Speaker 1: strength or speed. It's coordination, timing, body shape, movement, decision making.
Speaker 1: Its actually a motor skill. And if mental rehearsal worked anywhere,
Speaker 1: then I was thinking it could work with this. Again,
Speaker 1: if you've listened to me for a long time, you'll
Speaker 1: know what talk about. Shoulder shape studs shoulder contact, top
Speaker 1: of the shoulder contact in the tackle S shape body.
Speaker 1: So I imagine being sat on a toilet that's an
Speaker 1: S shaped body and keep your studs close and in
Speaker 1: the ground for some purchase s SS studs in the
Speaker 1: ground to drive through contact, easy to remember, easy to coach,
Speaker 1: easy to assess. One group physically practiced, but the representative
Speaker 1: players instead of extra physical practice were given video good
Speaker 1: examples of it, slow motion examples, key coaching points. And
Speaker 1: just because players are getting coached by REP coaches, it
Speaker 1: doesn't mean they get number one in tackle technique. The
Speaker 1: amount of so called REP coaches that I coached against
Speaker 1: and they never even looked at defense. But number two
Speaker 1: coach a completely different type of tackle technique. Guy eat
Speaker 1: over the ball. I wanted them under the ball. And
Speaker 1: I asked the players to mentally rehearse fifteen perfect tackles
Speaker 1: every night. I'm sure that they did other things before
Speaker 1: or after doing that with their mental rehearsal too, And
Speaker 1: instead of just watching them mentally rehearsed, and I asked
Speaker 1: them to imagine themselves making the tackle, to feel it,
Speaker 1: to see it, experience it. And these emotions very much
Speaker 1: linked to the fact that you might think about eating
Speaker 1: a big meal and your mouth starts salivating, and why
Speaker 1: you might not see the meal but you're thinking about it.
Speaker 1: There's numerous other examples. I'm sure you can use your
Speaker 1: brain to think about how the body might react just
Speaker 1: because you're thinking something or you're watching something. Right, the
Speaker 1: other players who all they did was mentally visualize their
Speaker 1: performances didn't fall away at all. In fact, several of
Speaker 1: them improved. Nobody got worse despite doing significantly less physical practice. Again,
Speaker 1: it was about learning, and it was about if players
Speaker 1: aren't physically training, they're not in improving and challenging that thought.
Speaker 1: If you think about your players now, the amount of
Speaker 1: football things they can watch. They can watch the TV
Speaker 1: games on TV Origin, NRL, but they can go on
Speaker 1: social media and consume videos on different sites and whatnot.
Speaker 1: But they'll also think about football. They'll talk football, They'll
Speaker 1: constantly be talking about analysis of football, and they probably
Speaker 1: do that more than we realized. I got the players
Speaker 1: to journal the players that were in my testing group,
Speaker 1: so we're in one group we're doing all the tackle
Speaker 1: technique practice. The other group were just doing the mental visualization.
Speaker 1: I think to make it past the university muster as well,
Speaker 1: it wasn't just all representative players and non representative players
Speaker 1: and another group. I mixed a few of them up.
Speaker 1: The journals were fascinating. Some players loved it, some struggled
Speaker 1: to concentrate. One admitted it kept fall asleep, another found
Speaker 1: it boring, another absolutely embraced it. And look, there's that
Speaker 1: lesson again. Every player was different. Stop thinking everybody learns
Speaker 1: the same way. I think as coaches, and particularly inexperienced coaches,
Speaker 1: often believe rest or time away from training means you
Speaker 1: can't improve. It doesn't. Sometimes the greatest improvement happens away
Speaker 1: from the field. I always remember, as a player myself,
Speaker 1: having a summer away from the game and the training,
Speaker 1: I just seem to come back a better player because
Speaker 1: it's almost like the mind processes the information after you
Speaker 1: were required to do it sometimes and it processes some
Speaker 1: of the learnings. That's called reflection. And from that you
Speaker 1: can watch some more video. You can talk, you can plan,
Speaker 1: you can visualize, you can think. Fatigue can stop learning,
Speaker 1: but sometimes less physical work creates more mental learning. So
Speaker 1: fast forward to now. So that was twenty ten. Now
Speaker 1: you've got AI, you've got a smartphone, access to video.
Speaker 1: Imagine giving every player a few clips before training or
Speaker 1: even just before they do a rep, and say I
Speaker 1: want you to do this. Imagine videoing your player who's
Speaker 1: doing a repetition and say look, I just need you
Speaker 1: to change this or change that, and you show them
Speaker 1: on your phone. Imagine what this can do for your training.
Speaker 1: It's all about asking how you can keep improving your
Speaker 1: players without simply making them do more. So send players
Speaker 1: now today. Send one great video clip before training, just
Speaker 1: one ask to your players to imagine executing that skill
Speaker 1: perfectly before training starts. Don't bombard them with information, Just
Speaker 1: say I need you to get this right, and you
Speaker 1: can maybe even say listen, if you do this perfectly
Speaker 1: in training, we'll longly do five minutes of it or
Speaker 1: something like that. Get your players not involved to act
Speaker 1: as assistant coaches and help coach their mates, and then
Speaker 1: they'll soon understand the power of that coaching style you've employed.
Speaker 1: I remember, some of your players won't necessarily improve from
Speaker 1: the video, but the vast majority of them are visual learners.
Speaker 1: Players don't improve only when they're moving. They can also
Speaker 1: improve when they're thinking. So I keep talking about learning styles. Okay,
Speaker 1: so basically we all learn one of four ways. According
Speaker 1: to some research a long time ago, we can put
Speaker 1: them into four categories. Visual auditory reading and kinesthetic. I'm
Speaker 1: trying to find my notes on this and I've gotten
Speaker 1: on so this is all coming off the chrome dough,
Speaker 1: visual videos, diagrams, stuff that you draw, Auditory, you're listening
Speaker 1: to a podcast. This is auditory audio reading, self explanatory.
Speaker 1: Kinesthetic is doing most Rugby league training for one hundred
Speaker 1: and something years has been kinesthetic. We do and coaches
Speaker 1: talk audio visual, auditory reading, kinesthetic, Google it Google Art
Speaker 1: learning styles. Do you reading that you are listening to
Speaker 1: Lee Addison on the Rugby League Coach podcast. I'm going
Speaker 1: to say that for next week, so I'll put that
Speaker 1: in red on my notes. I visited a club called
Speaker 1: Jim boomber Thunder last week to do Coach a Coach workshop.
Speaker 1: If you're in intersted in your club getting that, please
Speaker 1: get in touch admin at rugbyle Coach dot com to
Speaker 1: tay you. Here's the email to get me on at
Speaker 1: Rugby League Coach on Instagram and Facebook if you want
Speaker 1: to send me a message. If you go on the
Speaker 1: website Rugby League Coach dot Com to tay you, go
Speaker 1: to the contact section. You'll see the phone number I
Speaker 1: always find when I'm around coaches. I get really inspired
Speaker 1: about coaching conversations. Right, So one of the senior coaches
Speaker 1: at the club showed me a drill and I'll call
Speaker 1: it again stroke drill, and because I encourage the coaches
Speaker 1: to put on what they thought was their best drill,
Speaker 1: and then I could critique it. For want of a
Speaker 1: better term, so to describe it, it was basically a
Speaker 1: five versus five scenario. We gave it a name. I
Speaker 1: think it was shark bait or something like that. One
Speaker 1: player does three hit ups, the other fire into the
Speaker 1: other five, who do some defending. They have to move
Speaker 1: back a few meters after that and then go again.
Speaker 1: So they do three hit ups and it was okay,
Speaker 1: it was you know, it was fine. But every drill
Speaker 1: and every concept can improve. So I need you to
Speaker 1: understand when you listen to this, or I would like
Speaker 1: you to understand when you're listening to this that just
Speaker 1: because Lee Addison of Rugbyley coach critiques are drilled, doesn't
Speaker 1: mean it's not good. Okay, this guy had done plenty
Speaker 1: of thinking and it was in the top end of
Speaker 1: quality drill wise, but I asked him to explain his thoughts.
Speaker 1: I said, what are your goals? For this, and he
Speaker 1: actually came back with numerous goals. You know, hit up teamwork,
Speaker 1: tackle technique. I said, that's a lot of goals. What
Speaker 1: he also said was one plus, I'll be giving them
Speaker 1: a fitness workout. I said, what kind of fitness work out?
Speaker 1: Have you measured it? How many repetitions will everybody get?
Speaker 1: How many players have stood still at any one time.
Speaker 1: When it comes to your coaching goals, always best to
Speaker 1: have one goal. This is my big goal to see
Speaker 1: right now, and then some secondary ones that you will
Speaker 1: if you like, knock off the list if in time
Speaker 1: you get to them. Another thing that came up from
Speaker 1: this coaching night was, and I get this often with coaches.
Speaker 1: Coaches often don't know where to draw the line. I
Speaker 1: want you to be on time. If you're not, there'll
Speaker 1: be some kind of repercussion or And one of the
Speaker 1: most simple ways of explaining this is, imagine you ask
Speaker 1: your players to do some dynamic stretches. So let's talk
Speaker 1: about high knees, high knees dynamic stretch. If you say,
Speaker 1: I want there to be a line during that time,
Speaker 1: which I do, because I want my players to practice
Speaker 1: a defensive line at any one time, and want them
Speaker 1: to practice it whenever they can. If they come out
Speaker 1: of that line by an inch, they have to do
Speaker 1: the stretch again. And I've got the coaches to do
Speaker 1: these stretches. And I kept going go back, go back,
Speaker 1: go back on the point that was making is we
Speaker 1: are not going to go past these stretches until we've
Speaker 1: got the line. And it's consistently happening. And one coach,
Speaker 1: who's very right to ask, basically said, what if they
Speaker 1: don't get it for half an hour? I basically said
Speaker 1: that the slower you go, the faster you'll get there.
Speaker 1: If you can get this right, then they will know
Speaker 1: you've got standards all the way through. And it's also
Speaker 1: not that hard a task that they're doing. They just
Speaker 1: need to stay with their left person and the right
Speaker 1: person well to do some stretches. So fantastic discussions, fantastic questions.
Speaker 1: Joe asked a question. He said, now, this is a
Speaker 1: hard one to coach half back's voice demanding the ball,
Speaker 1: cutting out the white noise and the chaos controlling the team.
Speaker 1: How do you specifically coach your half back to master
Speaker 1: the art of communication under pressure. There's a thousand questions
Speaker 1: in that question, Joe, So doing something under pressure is
Speaker 1: different to not doing it, And how would you define
Speaker 1: pressure and how many different levels of pressure are they? Okay,
Speaker 1: So I would argue that a game of rugby league
Speaker 1: is an element of pressure because you're playing against another
Speaker 1: team and the pressure changes depending on the physicality and
Speaker 1: the quality of that other team and also the impacts
Speaker 1: of the game. Ie, if you need to win this
Speaker 1: game to win the premiership, then that pressure is bigger.
Speaker 1: So that's that's the one thing there. But let's go
Speaker 1: to the talking thing. Without knowing that person, Joe, I
Speaker 1: can't give you a definitive answer. It may be you've
Speaker 1: got the wrong half in there, I would argue, And
Speaker 1: I think the start this podcast has given you so
Speaker 1: much to think about in this regard, I would argue
Speaker 1: that you may be giving this half too much instruction
Speaker 1: and have a look at different ways you could potentially
Speaker 1: give this instruction because there's every chance they don't understand you. Thirdly,
Speaker 1: you want talk now. Do they know what to talk about?
Speaker 1: Do they know when they should talk about X, when
Speaker 1: they should talk about why, when they should talk about zed?
Speaker 1: Have you explained that? Have you explained it in the
Speaker 1: right way, think about the learning styles chat we've had
Speaker 1: right fourthly, who said that the half back has to
Speaker 1: do all the talking? Who says the half back has
Speaker 1: to do all the organizing. Everybody can talk and everybody
Speaker 1: can know the game plan. Have a think about that.
Speaker 1: You've got the the nine, the seven, and the six.
Speaker 1: You think about them as have been in the front
Speaker 1: line of attack. Everyone else on the back line. What
Speaker 1: can those in the back sea that those at nine,
Speaker 1: seven and six might not have time to see? So
Speaker 1: does he know what to talk about? Does he know
Speaker 1: what's saying, when to say when, when to say it,
Speaker 1: to ban the ball, to ban the ball? When white
Speaker 1: noise and chaos? How much white noise and chaos? And
Speaker 1: you want him to control the team? Well, what do
Speaker 1: you want him to control? And I honestly reckon there's
Speaker 1: some answers in there for you. Job in not it's
Speaker 1: along the way now I'll be doing a coach night
Speaker 1: in Leyton and I'll be doing a player clinic through
Speaker 1: the coach that I have mentored for many years now,
Speaker 1: Kai down in the Leeton area. He'll be running the
Speaker 1: clinic for me under my literally in person mentoring. Okay,
Speaker 1: I am going to end the podcast this week well
Speaker 1: number one by saying, if you're interested in that clinic,
Speaker 1: if you if you're somewhere near Leyton, maybe Griffith or
Speaker 1: something like that, if you, if you want to come
Speaker 1: to the coach Night or bring kids to the clinic,
Speaker 1: getting touch admin at Rugby League Coach dot com, butter
Speaker 1: you at Rugby League Coaching Socials. But I always say
Speaker 1: I will put something in this podcast. If somebody says
Speaker 1: it better than I can, I will put it in
Speaker 1: this podcast. I'm going to play six minutes ish of
Speaker 1: Paul Kent and some of you will go, oh, don't
Speaker 1: like polking bear with me because he talks about the
Speaker 1: grassroots in Australia, and he talks about the new TV
Speaker 1: deal and things like that. And I want to say
Speaker 1: to you before I play this clip. The reason I
Speaker 1: do what I do is because exactly exactly what Paul
Speaker 1: Kent is about to say on this podcast right now,
Speaker 1: Keny Blitz, you can get it through Fanatics TV. One
Speaker 1: thing Kenny always says he doesn't understand celebrity coaching and
Speaker 1: coaching is its own apprenticeship and whatnot. So amen to that, Paul,
Speaker 1: But I'm waiting to listen to this. It's about our
Speaker 1: grass roots. I'm going to say this now before I
Speaker 1: go to Paul Kent and Paul Crawley, who thinks also
Speaker 1: in this clip, before I go and go and say
Speaker 1: I love your work, coaches, but I want you to
Speaker 1: know what's coming now is why I have done what
Speaker 1: I have done with rugby league coach since July twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: The next time you listen to this podcast, it will
Speaker 1: be very close to rugby league coach's eighth birthday. The
Speaker 1: concept of rugby league coach not me. I'm a bit
Speaker 1: older than eight. But this is why I do it.
Speaker 1: So please listen until you get to the end of
Speaker 1: the podcast. Take care. I love your work.
Speaker 2: In the sand Clearly Will Clouds were anticipating seven a million,
Speaker 2: story cat, that's what where the players Association are going
Speaker 2: to draw for seven million and I don't know that
Speaker 2: that'll obviously push for a substantial increase. Then you've got,
Speaker 2: and this is my fear with the TV deal. Then
Speaker 2: you've got the two state leagues are both going to
Speaker 2: ask for their money, okay, and the fascination with all
Speaker 2: this as a players going to do their deal now
Speaker 2: abdau retires, we'll lose the game in two weeks. Vallenis
Speaker 2: will step in as executive chairman take over negotiations. How
Speaker 2: long the negotiations take, we don't know whether he'll be
Speaker 2: there instilling that capacity at the end of the negotiations
Speaker 2: with the players and then the state leagues and all
Speaker 2: the rest of it, we don't know. But if you
Speaker 2: go back two broadcast deals, which was a substantial hike
Speaker 2: at the time, the ENNERL came out and they gave
Speaker 2: basically the guts to the players and they said, we're
Speaker 2: just catching up to where we should be. And the
Speaker 2: player said, look, this is what we deserve. We've been behind.
Speaker 2: Our percentage of total revenue is less than what other
Speaker 2: codes are and we're just getting back to where we
Speaker 2: should be. And everyone had to cop that. But I
Speaker 2: remember arguing at the time, what about the grassroots And
Speaker 2: everyone said, no, they'll be looked at after the next
Speaker 2: broadcast deal. Then the next broadcast deal came along, and
Speaker 2: again the grassroots were basically the one area that was ignored.
Speaker 2: Again they got a little bit, but not enough and
Speaker 2: certainly not what they need. And then at the times
Speaker 2: Looke we looked after in the next one. So this
Speaker 2: is the one coming up. And the grassroots, to me,
Speaker 2: have been continually overlooked and continually just not being part
Speaker 2: of the conversation and just left out of it. And
Speaker 2: with the game needs to realize the players have got
Speaker 2: to come from somewhere. They've got to come from somewhere.
Speaker 2: And if you look at how specific and how detailed
Speaker 2: the AFL plans are to grow their game, and they
Speaker 2: are overtaking a lot of rugby league towns because they're
Speaker 2: putting so much funding into junior leagues and into their
Speaker 2: pathways to create AFL clubs. Thirty years ago, there were
Speaker 2: clubs in the Bush that didn't have AFL clubs. Now
Speaker 2: they've got the prime spot in town and rugby league
Speaker 2: is conceding all that territory.
Speaker 1: And they're doing it outside traditional AFL areas. That's what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. League areas are struggling in traditional league.
Speaker 2: I went years and years and years ago Demetrio when
Speaker 2: he was the boss of the AFL, he had a
Speaker 2: private meeting, or it wasn't private as a meeting with
Speaker 2: the board, but it was supposed to be kept in house,
Speaker 2: and it was for many many years. But he said,
Speaker 2: we're going to go after rugby league. We're going to
Speaker 2: do it two ways. He said, we're going to go
Speaker 2: after the hearts and minds, right, which is after basically
Speaker 2: a plan to go after the kids, right, get the
Speaker 2: kids to play, so the kids say to mom and dad,
Speaker 2: can I go? And can you take me to the footy?
Speaker 2: And the footy is AFL. And he said, we're going
Speaker 2: to go after their land geography. So what they did
Speaker 2: they started coming into councils. We'll pay for this, we'll
Speaker 2: pay for that and take it over Rugby League council
Speaker 2: will run rugby league grounds, turned them into AFL grounds.
Speaker 2: Now that's been a strategy for at least twenty years,
Speaker 2: and I mentoring the NROL at the time about it,
Speaker 2: and now I may never it's never going to happen.
Speaker 2: AFIL is never going to take over some of these
Speaker 2: rugby League heart leans. But they're playing a long game.
Speaker 2: Rugby League has got to get back in that fight.
Speaker 2: And this this deal, this is the way rugby league
Speaker 2: makes All their money is from the broadcast deal. The
Speaker 2: majority of their revenue is from the broadcast deal. So
Speaker 2: something out of this revenue, out of this broadcast deal,
Speaker 2: has to go back into that fight to repel the
Speaker 2: a f L threat spat Keep Keep, Keep,