Speaker 1: How are you doing? Welcome to the Rugby League Coach Podcast,
Speaker 1: Episode two hundred and fifty. How good a number does
Speaker 1: that sound? A quarter of one thousand? And we're in
Speaker 1: season four of it too. I am Lee Addison. I
Speaker 1: am the owner of Rugby League Coach dot com au.
Speaker 1: I'm a coach mentor, I'm a coach educator, a coach
Speaker 1: consultant a few other things. I'm also one author of
Speaker 1: Rugby League Coach thirteen game Changing Conversations to Transform your coaching.
Speaker 1: And I consume a lot of water, and as I
Speaker 1: tell you every week, my water is sponsored by the
Speaker 1: Global League Network that you can find at Global League
Speaker 1: Dot Network. Aard of me. There's a word of one
Speaker 1: to get into every coach's head today. Deliberate, Be deliberate.
Speaker 1: What does that mean when I watch so many of
Speaker 1: the coaches that I'm mentor and many coaches that I
Speaker 1: have mentored and do mentor and no doubt will mentor
Speaker 1: when I talk to them in a seminar or in
Speaker 1: a meeting that we have and I say, this is
Speaker 1: the type of coaching I would do, this is what
Speaker 1: I think is best, and then I explain why I
Speaker 1: think it's best the majority sit there and say back, yes,
Speaker 1: that's what I'm doing or Okay, that's what we'll do.
Speaker 1: And anybody who's listened to me for significant enough amount
Speaker 1: of time will know I'm a fan of games based
Speaker 1: training and drills that absolutely relate to the game. I
Speaker 1: guess the biggest disconnector find Number one, it's the perception
Speaker 1: of how specific those things need to be to the game.
Speaker 1: But number two, it's the actual level of being deliberate
Speaker 1: as a coach. And I think I'm going to work
Speaker 1: around this phrase a little bit so, particularly when I
Speaker 1: came to Australia, I realized, after coaching in England for
Speaker 1: so long, and obviously born and raised in England, that
Speaker 1: in England your average male or female tends to be
Speaker 1: a little bit more intense. They'll hit you straight in
Speaker 1: the eyes with whatever it is that needs to happen,
Speaker 1: particularly us from up north. For example, if you're starting
Speaker 1: the session at six pm and some of your players
Speaker 1: are dragging their heels at two minutes past six, I
Speaker 1: guess a Northern english person is more allowed to say
Speaker 1: hurry your ass up and get over here now. As
Speaker 1: a rule, I find and aussy coaches a lot more
Speaker 1: relaxed with that kind of thing, and they're a bit
Speaker 1: less deliberate when they start their training and they say
Speaker 1: things like, right, we're just going to do this, let's go,
Speaker 1: rather than starting with a deliberate start to the session
Speaker 1: and a description of what they're going to do in
Speaker 1: this session, a pep talk about the quality of what
Speaker 1: you want to see, and then a clear description of
Speaker 1: the first session of the first part of the session
Speaker 1: that you're going to do, and clear instructions or as
Speaker 1: clear as you can make them. So if you picture
Speaker 1: the scene I'm trying to create at the start of
Speaker 1: training at six o'clock, the coach has got his team
Speaker 1: or her team hopefully in a circle or a semi
Speaker 1: circle rather than just milling around, and anybody who's late
Speaker 1: to that semi circle or circle a hurrying. The lake
Speaker 1: comes on. So there's a clear definition and a deliberate
Speaker 1: definition between non training time and training time. That's why
Speaker 1: I will continue to argue with everybody on social media
Speaker 1: who will say to me, we do a lap to socialize.
Speaker 1: We do a lap of the field at the start
Speaker 1: for the players to socialize. No training starts. When training starts,
Speaker 1: there needs to be a clear difference between pre training
Speaker 1: and genuine training. Otherwise you get the concentration levels that
Speaker 1: you desire. So a lot of it comes down to
Speaker 1: how deliberate you are as a coach. Okay, this is
Speaker 1: now the start of the session. I need you to concentrate.
Speaker 1: I constantly bang on on this podcast about doing pulse
Speaker 1: raisers before dynamics. Pulse raisers such as a drill with
Speaker 1: the ball in the hand, a game of some kind.
Speaker 1: All those joggers around the field were saying, well, look's
Speaker 1: where we do. The jogger roam the field. But I've
Speaker 1: told you why why not? You shouldn't bother with that
Speaker 1: A thousand times too. Apart from the fact that you're
Speaker 1: not preparing anyone for a marathon, you're preparing them for
Speaker 1: rugby league and you need to develop the skills. But
Speaker 1: then the next thing I want to talk about today
Speaker 1: is the quality of those stretches that you do. And
Speaker 1: again it comes down to being deliberate. Let's say you've
Speaker 1: got a team doing high knees bum flicks. For example,
Speaker 1: Karry oaks three things, three dynamic exercises. Google them if
Speaker 1: you don't know what they are, and you just get
Speaker 1: them done and you don't correct the poor technique. Particularly
Speaker 1: with younger players, the techniques are going to be quite poor.
Speaker 1: You've got to be deliberate about fixing that. You've got
Speaker 1: to We are doing dynamics, and we're going to do
Speaker 1: them properly. We are going to be more deliberate about
Speaker 1: how we do dynamics. So if you don't do them properly,
Speaker 1: we're going to do them again, and we're going to
Speaker 1: do them again. I want you to do this now. Players,
Speaker 1: you will do it how I want until we get
Speaker 1: it right. So if again, if you go back to
Speaker 1: picture the scene, your typical coach I see at the moment,
Speaker 1: and this is probably because they haven't had this level
Speaker 1: of training. Quite frankly, it's not a criticism. Players will
Speaker 1: just drift into into the session whenever they like it.
Speaker 1: They'll invariably do dynamics first. The dynamics will be of
Speaker 1: poor quality, poor repetitions of each. A lot of the
Speaker 1: people who are doing these dynamic stretches don't know how
Speaker 1: many they should do, how many sets of each And
Speaker 1: also they move up and down in a or they're
Speaker 1: meant to move up and down in a line. Well,
Speaker 1: that's a perfect time to develop your line discipline even
Speaker 1: while they're doing dynamics. So if you imagine now, and
Speaker 1: I'm talking again about the word deliberate, what you are
Speaker 1: now perceiving as the start of your session that you
Speaker 1: just need to get through. We start the session and
Speaker 1: then we get to the nice stuff for the drills. Okay,
Speaker 1: what it is now is you have a clear start
Speaker 1: time and anybody whose late knows about it. Now, if
Speaker 1: nothing else, just hurry your backside here and get in
Speaker 1: the session. I'm not saying necessarily punish them for being late.
Speaker 1: It's probably their parents, if the kids or somebody might
Speaker 1: have let you know. If they're older. You just get
Speaker 1: them quickly into the session though, because every second they're
Speaker 1: missing they're not developing. And then you do something game
Speaker 1: related to raise the pulse a drill or again. And
Speaker 1: then after that, sorry, I've missed something out myself. Before
Speaker 1: you get to that pulse raiser, you've had them in
Speaker 1: a circle or a semicircle, and you've clearly outlined what's
Speaker 1: in the session today, and you've clearly outlined your expectations,
Speaker 1: and you've clearly described what's coming. First, you then get
Speaker 1: the players to shake hands or high five each other
Speaker 1: before they start, and then you do that pulse raiser.
Speaker 1: So sorry I missed that out. I trust me, if
Speaker 1: I was on the training field, I wouldn't miss that out.
Speaker 1: And then you've done your pulse rader, and depending if
Speaker 1: it's a drill, you might do two minutes each side.
Speaker 1: If it's a game of some kind, you might play
Speaker 1: for four to five minutes. Then you put them in
Speaker 1: dynamic stretches. And in those dynamic stretches you have focused
Speaker 1: heavily on how many repetitions they need to do to
Speaker 1: make sure they are stretched properly, and you also focus
Speaker 1: on how to deliver the dynamics. I e. If we're
Speaker 1: doing high knees, the technique needs to be perfect. If
Speaker 1: we're doing bum flicks, the techniques need to be perfect.
Speaker 1: If we are doing karaoke, whatever the exercise may be,
Speaker 1: it needs to be done well and as close to
Speaker 1: perfection as possible. And also when your players are moving
Speaker 1: up and down doing their dynamics, they can work in
Speaker 1: a line, which helps them practice line discipline, which helps
Speaker 1: them in defense. That session, that start to the session
Speaker 1: I've just described, it's very deliberate and it makes you
Speaker 1: players realize that it's alike Donkey Kong today, coach isn't
Speaker 1: messing about, and it sets your tongue for the session.
Speaker 1: Remember how you start your session. If you don't start
Speaker 1: it being deliberate in your coaching, your rest of your
Speaker 1: session will suffer. If you're starting a session at six,
Speaker 1: it's an affront that people don't turn up well in
Speaker 1: advance of six to start the session. You should be
Speaker 1: ready as a coach. Everything should be prepared. You should
Speaker 1: be waiting for your players to arrive. You're listening to
Speaker 1: the Rugby League Coach podcast with Lee Addison. In a
Speaker 1: recent coach mentoring session, myself and the coach reviewed a
Speaker 1: close loss and the coach immediately pointed to the lack
Speaker 1: of fresh substitutes that he had. He's limited bench options,
Speaker 1: he had players backing up from reserve grade. It was
Speaker 1: an A grade coach. He still is an A grade coach.
Speaker 1: He's not been zacked. And he also talked about injuries
Speaker 1: in his team, so all legitimate issues. My first question
Speaker 1: to him was can you control any of those? His
Speaker 1: answer is basically no. Now, of course, a lot of
Speaker 1: how you prepare, etc. And everything else, Yes, you can
Speaker 1: control if you're at a certain level, but at a grade,
Speaker 1: you probably can't control those things, and you certainly can't
Speaker 1: control them on game day. And if you can't control them,
Speaker 1: they shouldn't dominate your coaching detention. Too many coaches, as
Speaker 1: this coach did until he had a chat with him,
Speaker 1: worry about circumstances instead of behaviors. The focus should always
Speaker 1: come back to what can we improve between now and
Speaker 1: next weekend. In the same meeting, one of the biggest
Speaker 1: chats I had with the coach was about interchange management,
Speaker 1: and my philosophy is simple on that the only players
Speaker 1: who should really get tired are your middles. Your props
Speaker 1: may be a lock depending on how you want them
Speaker 1: to play loose forward if you're in England or New Zealand.
Speaker 1: But your spine players, you strike players, your decision makers.
Speaker 1: They're the ones you want on the field all the time,
Speaker 1: aren't they? So your interchange should have cover for them.
Speaker 1: But when it comes to front rowers, coaches make the
Speaker 1: mistake of pulling them off the field and hopes they
Speaker 1: pulling them off, pulling them off the field the moment
Speaker 1: they look tired for a millisecond. But I played prop
Speaker 1: and most props know this. We often get a second win.
Speaker 1: Props spend the first ten or fifteen minutes of any
Speaker 1: game trying to physically dominate their opponent. Whatever your game
Speaker 1: plan is. Even if your game plan is kick on
Speaker 1: the first tackle and chase, your props will be thinking
Speaker 1: about dominating their opposite numbers, dominating the opposite middle, and
Speaker 1: so many coaches, just as they're starting to win that battle,
Speaker 1: which is a massive battle to win in the in
Speaker 1: the in the prop's head, coaches take them off. So
Speaker 1: here's a general rule of thumb to work to. If
Speaker 1: your prop looks tired but he's still getting back into
Speaker 1: the line and competing on everything, give him or her
Speaker 1: another set, maybe even too. Don't rush the interchange. There's
Speaker 1: a difference between being tired and being beaten. The worst
Speaker 1: thing you can do to a proper who's gone really well,
Speaker 1: who's had a great run, is take them off straight
Speaker 1: after that, because a lot of the game in the
Speaker 1: middle is about confidence and it's about getting one up
Speaker 1: over your opponent. And remember, if you can see a
Speaker 1: try or score a try, you also get a four
Speaker 1: minute break on average, lots of time to get energy back.
Speaker 1: A very big mistake coaches make is studying losses significantly
Speaker 1: and wins just going oh yeah, we won and moving on.
Speaker 1: I got this tip when I read a book about
Speaker 1: Clive Woodward, the old England rugby coach in two thousand
Speaker 1: and three World Cup winning and he released a book
Speaker 1: in two thousand and four, so I was then a
Speaker 1: very young coach, a pup, and he basically said in
Speaker 1: that book that in the workplace that he worked at,
Speaker 1: if they did a great deal or had a great week,
Speaker 1: the bossy said, let's drink and let's celebrate that week.
Speaker 1: If something failed or markers weren't realized and outcomes weren't achieved,
Speaker 1: there was a big debrief, a big pow wow, and
Speaker 1: a big inquest, and Clive wood would have argued it
Speaker 1: should be the exact opposite, and in some of that
Speaker 1: water thank you Globally network, he argued that when you win,
Speaker 1: you need to analyze that as much as you can,
Speaker 1: and when you lose, you need to take what you
Speaker 1: can from it, but not worry too much, because if
Speaker 1: you're doing well and your systems are in place, then
Speaker 1: it's just a blip in the system. If you're going
Speaker 1: to lose games as a coach, and this goes to
Speaker 1: every coach out there who's winning right now. Your signs
Speaker 1: usually appear that you're going to lose in your wins.
Speaker 1: Most coaches obsess over losses. They watch them repeatedly, analyze
Speaker 1: every mistake, tear them apart. But often the exact same
Speaker 1: errors existed in the previous week's forty point victory or
Speaker 1: two weeks before, three weeks before, the amount of times
Speaker 1: I speak to coaches whose teams are going well and
Speaker 1: tell them the warning signs are there. You need to
Speaker 1: fix this, you need to fix that, And the only
Speaker 1: reason it's not coming up on the scoreboard in the
Speaker 1: previous weeks is the opposition wasn't good enough to punish it.
Speaker 1: Good teams that you play against exposed problems, but poor
Speaker 1: teams allow you to get away with them. And that's
Speaker 1: why the focus on your wins is often just as valuable,
Speaker 1: in fact more valuable, I'll be honest, than reviewing losses
Speaker 1: sometimes because your errors will be in that winning game too. If,
Speaker 1: for example, in a loss, you had a right edge
Speaker 1: defender inside inside the wing, so a center who kept
Speaker 1: jumping out the line and getting his or her read wrong,
Speaker 1: I can promise you that in those wins, he would
Speaker 1: have started looking or she would have started looking to
Speaker 1: do that anyway, and you'd tell by their hips even
Speaker 1: though the ball never got there, if your completion rate
Speaker 1: was low, even though you won some easier games, I
Speaker 1: can promise you if you're dropping the ball against those teams,
Speaker 1: you're very likely to drop the ball against better teams,
Speaker 1: particularly if it's collision related. And one of the dangers
Speaker 1: about winning games of football and not analyzing them is
Speaker 1: one of the biggest indicators of how you're going to
Speaker 1: win a game is go forward. And in a tough game,
Speaker 1: if there's no go forward or the goal, the go
Speaker 1: forward and the and the contact line is equal, i e.
Speaker 1: The defense and the and the attack is still really
Speaker 1: competing for it. The whole dynamics of the game. For
Speaker 1: the attack change, the space isn't as easy to see,
Speaker 1: whereas if you're going forward, the space is obvious to
Speaker 1: see because the defense is going backwards. So that's why
Speaker 1: you've got to really drill down into your into your
Speaker 1: wins before the loss has come. And I'll give you
Speaker 1: a little model now for reviewing your games. How many
Speaker 1: players do you think, sorry, how many players. Do you
Speaker 1: think can remember everything that's in your head right now
Speaker 1: about your team? Bear in mind they've got the wrong
Speaker 1: game to think about too. So I say to coaches,
Speaker 1: and this is how I work in my own coaching.
Speaker 1: If you can only change three things, what would there be?
Speaker 1: And quite often, more often than not, it comes down
Speaker 1: to holding the ball, It comes down to giving away
Speaker 1: penalties and rock discipline. If you can get those three
Speaker 1: things right, you go a very long way to winning
Speaker 1: most games of football. And that's it, three things, not
Speaker 1: twenty forty three. That's because winning games of football is
Speaker 1: about subtraction, not addition. Quite frankly, you need to get
Speaker 1: rid of the things that are going wrong before you
Speaker 1: add another play or another shape, or another call or
Speaker 1: another tactic. Great coaching is about identifying a few things
Speaker 1: that matter most and relentlessly reinforcing them. And when you're
Speaker 1: looking at your penalties, they're often a symptom of the
Speaker 1: way you're tackling. They're often a symptom of the way
Speaker 1: you defense retreats and gets up again, and they're often
Speaker 1: a symptom of how you're trying to control the resultant rook.
Speaker 1: After you've done all those things, So if penalties are
Speaker 1: a key issue, that's fair enough. But when you dig deeper,
Speaker 1: is it the penalties or is it the way you're tackling,
Speaker 1: the way you're losing the rock? Are the penalty is
Speaker 1: the consequence? So when you're looking at your tapes and
Speaker 1: when you're analyzing your team, don't just look at the symptoms.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's very easy for us to go, oh, no,
Speaker 1: we've conceded that try on the right. Our defense read
Speaker 1: it wrong. Let's sack the center and the wing. That's
Speaker 1: the symptom, that's the outcome. But if you look at
Speaker 1: your rock, if you look at your tackle technique, if
Speaker 1: you look at your defensive split, if you look at
Speaker 1: the way the players were retreating in the defensive line,
Speaker 1: if you look at your line speed. Only if all
Speaker 1: those things are right, including the fact that you might
Speaker 1: be on your eighteenth tackle because you're giving away six
Speaker 1: agains or penalties, if all those things are where you
Speaker 1: want them to be, then yes, your right edge is
Speaker 1: a problem. And that's the difference. In good coaching, look
Speaker 1: for the causes of your problems. Quite often a try
Speaker 1: can become seeded because of what's happened in the previous
Speaker 1: three or full sets, or earlier in that same set,
Speaker 1: not just on that play. Drop Balls may be caused
Speaker 1: by poor fatigue management. Penalties might be caused because you're
Speaker 1: losing the rook or you're tackling poor in Mistackles might
Speaker 1: be caused by poor spacing, or penalties could be because
Speaker 1: of poor technique, tackling too high, poor footwork, et cetera.
Speaker 1: Poor attack could be caused by your poor set structure.
Speaker 1: So I talked about earlier about not adding plays and shapes, Well,
Speaker 1: you should only add plays and shapes when you know
Speaker 1: that the way you're constructing your set gives the players
Speaker 1: the optimum position to exploit any space that they've got.
Speaker 1: If the way you structured your set hasn't created the
Speaker 1: space in the defensive line or outside the defensive line,
Speaker 1: I suggest you need to structure your sets better. And
Speaker 1: this is what I help coaches do because the amount
Speaker 1: of times I watch footage with coaches and there's moments
Speaker 1: where players are looking to do any tunnel ball or
Speaker 1: a special shape and clever solutions, and quite frankly, sometimes
Speaker 1: they just need to shift the ball on a play
Speaker 1: earlier or two plays earlier. And what's happening is players
Speaker 1: are creating spaces without even knowing they are, but not
Speaker 1: looking for them, not recognizing them. They'll be overlaps, they'll
Speaker 1: be numbers, they'll be space, but players aren't scanning looking
Speaker 1: for them. And if players simply looked up and identified
Speaker 1: where the defense was vulnerable and had the ability to
Speaker 1: get the ball there quickly, then the game would be
Speaker 1: a hell of a lot easier. Most teams rely entirely
Speaker 1: on halves, don't they to identify space? But why? Centers
Speaker 1: can see back, rollers can see space, Wingers can see space.
Speaker 1: You fall back and see space. Everybody watching the game
Speaker 1: can see space. Everybody should be scanning and looking for
Speaker 1: that space. One of the best ways to coach it
Speaker 1: in any oppose that you're doing any thirteen versus thirteen,
Speaker 1: even a small sided game, even a drill that's a
Speaker 1: decision making drill, freeze it, stop it, and ask every
Speaker 1: player wears the space. Every player, not just the halfback,
Speaker 1: everybody the war. Players look up and only recognize opportunities,
Speaker 1: the better their communication about those opportunities becomes, and the
Speaker 1: less they will rely on structure. Players love playing football.
Speaker 1: You've heard it called eyes up football. I'm not a
Speaker 1: particular fan of that, but players love looking up and playing.
Speaker 1: It's enjoyable, it's creative, and it's the actual game. Frankly,
Speaker 1: if I was coaching your team, I can promise you,
Speaker 1: if I was coaching your team for the next three
Speaker 1: four weeks, my entire message would fit on one whiteboard
Speaker 1: and it would be something like hold the ball, look up,
Speaker 1: kill the roock, reduce your penalties. And I'd mentioned that
Speaker 1: in every session, every review, every team talk every text
Speaker 1: message if they were old enough for me to do that,
Speaker 1: because players don't need more information, they need better habits.
Speaker 1: And games are rarely won by the team with the
Speaker 1: biggest playbook. They're usually won by the team that executes
Speaker 1: the basics under pressure. And quite frankly, soon I'll be
Speaker 1: talking about origin and I'll be mentioning those things. One
Speaker 1: of my favorite section on this podcast is looking outside
Speaker 1: rugby league to see what sports can teach us, and
Speaker 1: probably too much. I talk about soccer football, and I
Speaker 1: want to talk to you about a guy called Charles
Speaker 1: Hughes because I think his story relates to everything in sport,
Speaker 1: quite frankly, any sport. So therefore, rugby league coaches selectors
Speaker 1: administrators should understand this. So this was back in the well.
Speaker 1: It started in the sixties actually, but the seventies and
Speaker 1: eighties Charles Hughes was in England's coaching director and became
Speaker 1: very influential. He became the director of coaching for the
Speaker 1: Football Association and wrote a book called The Winning Formula.
Speaker 1: That's quite significant title Magie Mind called thirteen Game Changing
Speaker 1: Conversations to Transform Your Coaching. So I suppose they're both
Speaker 1: quite bold. And the problem wasn't that Hughes didn't believe
Speaker 1: in the evidence that he compiled in this book. It
Speaker 1: was the problem that he believed in the wrong interpretation
Speaker 1: of it. The data changed the way English football moved
Speaker 1: forward in the seventies and the eighties, and for those
Speaker 1: who don't know, England haven't won a World Cup since
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty six, despite having one of the biggest player
Speaker 1: pools in the world. Hughes analyzed more than one hundred
Speaker 1: football matches and noticed that a large percentage of goals
Speaker 1: were scored following moves involving three passes or fewer. So
Speaker 1: from that three passes or fewer he reached a conclusion.
Speaker 1: He'd looked at the symptom, not the cause. He decided
Speaker 1: that if most goals come from a short number of passes,
Speaker 1: teams should get the ball forward as quickly as possible,
Speaker 1: and that ended up with the English game focusing on
Speaker 1: long balls, direct play focusing on territory and getting the
Speaker 1: ball into dangerous areas on repeat. And he also developed
Speaker 1: the concept of POMO, which is positions of maximum opportunity,
Speaker 1: areas where goals were most commonly scored. And he kept
Speaker 1: saying that if you keep delivering the ball into those areas,
Speaker 1: eventually goals will come. And on the surface, it sounds logical,
Speaker 1: it's evidence based, it's backed by stats, and it's measurable,
Speaker 1: and that's why so many brought into it. But the
Speaker 1: problem was Hughes had confused correlation with causation. He confused
Speaker 1: the outcome the symptom with the cause. Just because many
Speaker 1: goals were scored after three passes didn't mean that three
Speaker 1: passes was the best way to attack, which is how
Speaker 1: he interpreted it. He was actually measuring the final phase
Speaker 1: of a move or a period of play. So, for example,
Speaker 1: if you're going to do a long ball in football
Speaker 1: in soccer, there needs to be spaced the defense needs
Speaker 1: to be stretched because you've brought them up the field.
Speaker 1: If you keep doing long balls, a defense will just
Speaker 1: sit back and defend those long balls, so when you
Speaker 1: knock them down they can clear them away. So it's
Speaker 1: not about the three passes, it's about what happened before
Speaker 1: the three passes. Perhaps has been thirty before the defense
Speaker 1: was finally stretched, patient possession, building pressure. There's a big
Speaker 1: difference with just focusing on three passes and then what
Speaker 1: happened in England. For decades, English football embraced the philosophy
Speaker 1: of three passes. Youth players were encouraged to play direct
Speaker 1: Coaches valued territory. Possession was often viewed with suspicion. Creative
Speaker 1: players weren't always prioritized time. The Dutch developed total football,
Speaker 1: which was past past, past, past, past, move movement, movement,
Speaker 1: move move moved. You may have heard of Pep Guardiola,
Speaker 1: whose mentor came out of that system. The Germans evolved,
Speaker 1: and then eventually England found itself lagging behind that it
Speaker 1: once considered equals and to this day, as I record,
Speaker 1: even after a great win in the first game, England
Speaker 1: still haven't won a major tournament. What's the rugby league lesson.
Speaker 1: In all this, how often do we hear statistics thrown
Speaker 1: around as absolute truths. Most tries are scored on tackled
Speaker 1: for most tries come from kicks. Most tries scored in
Speaker 1: the red zone, the emphasis on the red zone. Have
Speaker 1: you noticed how many teams can't score in the so
Speaker 1: called red zone, which is good ball. I'll tell you
Speaker 1: the reason why for that. The defense are ready for you.
Speaker 1: Queensland the other day kept shifting on tackle four out
Speaker 1: of their own area. If lorry Dale's new South Wales
Speaker 1: team had any semblance of an idea, they would have
Speaker 1: covered that easily because they kept shifting there on play four.
Speaker 1: All the stats that you can power may be true,
Speaker 1: but they don't necessarily tell us what caused the outcome
Speaker 1: that you're looking for. Imagine we discovered that seventy percent
Speaker 1: of tries are scored within twenty meters of the opposition line.
Speaker 1: It'd be easy for you to think, get down there
Speaker 1: and then we can do something. What the stats don't
Speaker 1: tell you is if all those tries came because somebody
Speaker 1: made a break with an early shift and got tackled
Speaker 1: in the twenty meter zone, and then they scored on
Speaker 1: the back of that doesn't The stats don't tell you
Speaker 1: anything about field position, kick pressure, ruck dominance, possession control,
Speaker 1: defensive fatigue, ball movement, doesn't say anything about the previous
Speaker 1: ten sets, twenty sets, one hundred sets. So the coaching
Speaker 1: challenge is always understanding the causes, not the symptoms, how
Speaker 1: things are created. We've just had origin too, and I
Speaker 1: guess this conversation about selections and styles of players really
Speaker 1: relevant when you look at Queensland and New South Wales.
Speaker 1: So I'm going to develop that thought with the second
Speaker 1: half of this podcast. We often hear selectors talking about
Speaker 1: picking players because of certain measurable outputs. It might be
Speaker 1: run meters, line breaks, tackle, tackle busts, offloads, try assists. Yes,
Speaker 1: those numbers matter, but context matters a hell of a
Speaker 1: lot more. A player might have huge numbers because which
Speaker 1: is playing in a dominant system. Look at the difference
Speaker 1: between Nathan Cleary in the club game and in representative football.
Speaker 1: He's like a different player. I feel like I've been
Speaker 1: a lone voice and if I want to get abused
Speaker 1: on social media, I'll say something bad about Nathan Cleary.
Speaker 1: Paul Kent showed a little bit last week. He said
Speaker 1: something similar, but he didn't go into deep detail. But
Speaker 1: all the other media outlets are looking for somebody to
Speaker 1: go with Nathan Cleary. Yeah, another player might have modest
Speaker 1: numbers but makes everyone around them better. Statistics tells you
Speaker 1: what happened, It doesn't always tell you why. And that's
Speaker 1: what we need to look at when we're a coach.
Speaker 1: And the lesson from the Charles Hughes thing isn't that
Speaker 1: statistics are bad. Far from it. Coach, you should love
Speaker 1: the numbers. Good organization. Good coaches should use evidence. The
Speaker 1: lesson is that that evidence should start conversations, not end them.
Speaker 1: Whenever you see a trend in your starts or in
Speaker 1: anything that's happened, ask why, what's causing it? What are
Speaker 1: we missing? What's the context? When you get it wrong,
Speaker 1: you could be knocking your head against a brick wall
Speaker 1: for the rest of your season. If there's anybody who
Speaker 1: lives within decent distance of Yanko and Leton, so Mirandra, Griffith, etc. However,
Speaker 1: however far you're willing to travel around there, So no,
Speaker 1: Griffith isn't far away west? While along to more what
Speaker 1: woggo woga. I could keep going on and on and on.
Speaker 1: I am very aware that in the second week of
Speaker 1: the coming school holidays in New South Wales there is
Speaker 1: a coach session that I'm delivering at that club, Yanko
Speaker 1: Wamun and the day after there will be a kid's
Speaker 1: clinic that the lead coach will be one of the
Speaker 1: coaches I've mentored for the last four years and I'll
Speaker 1: be there to oversee you. If you are interested in that,
Speaker 1: and also if you're interested in sending questions to this podcast,
Speaker 1: you can get me at Rugby League Coach on all
Speaker 1: socials platforms apart from x which is at RL Coach
Speaker 1: on the net. Message me on Instagram or Facebook please,
Speaker 1: or you can email me admin at Rugby League Coach
Speaker 1: dot com to take you. But if you're interested in
Speaker 1: a seminar with me and or a clinic for kids,
Speaker 1: and I'm telling you now, it will either be free
Speaker 1: or you have to pay thirty dollars depending on where
Speaker 1: you come from. The dates are Tuesday the fourteenth of
Speaker 1: July and Wednesday the fifteenth of July. Okay, so if
Speaker 1: you're interested in that, please get in touch Rugby League
Speaker 1: Coach on Socials admin at Rugby League Coach dot com.
Speaker 1: To tell you is the email. Get in touch with
Speaker 1: me and I'll tell you all about it. What should
Speaker 1: we go through? Next? State of origin? The Blues? Right now,
Speaker 1: as I sit here, one win away from a state
Speaker 1: of origin series, one win away from whining state of origin.
Speaker 1: But somehow the mood around New South Wales and everything
Speaker 1: associated with it is probably lower than I can't remember
Speaker 1: it apart from when he had lost eight on the bounce. Now,
Speaker 1: I've been around sport long enough to know that that
Speaker 1: could do everything to galvanize the New South Wales team
Speaker 1: bought after Queensland flogging New South Wales forty four twenty
Speaker 1: four in Melbourne. Huge questions are being asked about Lourie Daily,
Speaker 1: his coaching, the selections, the tactics and general leadership. Definitely
Speaker 1: from me, I'm asking those questions. The question I want
Speaker 1: to ask is to New South Wales under Laurie Daily,
Speaker 1: but indeed under anybody know what they are? I think
Speaker 1: they knew what they were under Michael Maguire for a year.
Speaker 1: I think for a couple of years under Brad Fitler
Speaker 1: they were very convinced of who they were. Queensland throughout
Speaker 1: all this time seemed to know clearly who they are.
Speaker 1: Queensland are playing with freedom, instinct and confidence. You can't
Speaker 1: say the same thing about New South Wales, can you?
Speaker 1: They're definitely caught between structure and instinct. Mitchell Moses selected
Speaker 1: for Game two despite not playing for six weeks, and
Speaker 1: let's remember New South Wales won Game one and everyone
Speaker 1: thought Ethan Strange was excellent. Why was Moses pick? Now?
Speaker 1: I'm not saying Moses shouldn't have been picked, but I'm
Speaker 1: saying why was he? Genuinely the best option? Is Nathan
Speaker 1: Cleary genuinely the best option? Or are we listening to
Speaker 1: the news cycles? Are we going on? Reputation? Is New
Speaker 1: South Wales trying to fit names into positions? I have
Speaker 1: to laugh, by the way, all the social media trolls
Speaker 1: who think I m Queenslander and then some accused me
Speaker 1: of being a New South waleshman. Obviously it's hilarious. I've
Speaker 1: never ever ever said a support as a team does
Speaker 1: continuity of position not matter? In origin? And what message
Speaker 1: did all this send to Eat and Strange. Queensland regularly
Speaker 1: picked form and fit players and they're also very loyal
Speaker 1: to certain players too, whereas New South Wales seemed to
Speaker 1: pick the players everyone seems to want all along, don't they,
Speaker 1: particularly the newspapers. Why didn't you said Wales always want
Speaker 1: to pick players with injuries. As soon as the game finished,
Speaker 1: Joey John said we need Latroll Mitchell fit. What's the
Speaker 1: obsection with that? The bench that wasn't used too that
Speaker 1: was battling now spoke earlier about interchange props for Noah
Speaker 1: Blake came on with about twelve minutes to go. Was
Speaker 1: it apicorus? I'm not used at all? Even though New
Speaker 1: South Wales were offering nothing around the rock Rhyes Robson
Speaker 1: played eighty minutes. New South Wales attack was really predictable.
Speaker 1: Why carry happy if you're not going to use him?
Speaker 1: What advantage does that second hooker provide if he never
Speaker 1: leaves the bench? Was it poor planning before the game,
Speaker 1: poor adaptation during the game, or a lack of smarts
Speaker 1: about how to coach football? Again, selection is important, managing
Speaker 1: management during the game is important. New South Wales again
Speaker 1: looked all structured. In game one they were playing too
Speaker 1: north South. In game two they played too much East West.
Speaker 1: New South Wales seemed obsessed with running the system, whereas
Speaker 1: Queensland quite regularly played what was in front of them. Yes,
Speaker 1: in their own exit, Queensland shifted on tackle four. It
Speaker 1: was easy to read, easy to read than a children's novel,
Speaker 1: if you ask me. But because New South Wales didn't
Speaker 1: read it, some Queensland player went down the left sixty
Speaker 1: seventy meters. On the back of that play the ball,
Speaker 1: Queensland played what was in front of them. The Maroons
Speaker 1: adapted all the time. The Blues kept following scripts. New
Speaker 1: South Wales seemed to be coaching and doing too much
Speaker 1: structure and playing too little. Laurie Daily it's uncomfortable discussion
Speaker 1: because he's such a good blow. I have met him once.
Speaker 1: He was very, very nice to talk to, and everybody
Speaker 1: says he's one of the nicest blokes on earth. And
Speaker 1: he's also one of the greatest origin players in history.
Speaker 1: But if ever there's a lesson coaching and playing a
Speaker 1: different jobs his overall coaching record in Origin. He's under
Speaker 1: intense scrutiny now and we can't argue that New South
Speaker 1: Wales have improved under Lorrie Daily. We can't argue that
Speaker 1: they're maximizing the talent available to them. Here's a question
Speaker 1: if Billy Billi Slater and Lorrie Daly swap dressing rooms
Speaker 1: before Game three, who would be favorites? Something that always
Speaker 1: gets overlooked his culture. Queens and always appear to have
Speaker 1: a very clear understanding of who and what they are.
Speaker 1: They know their story, know their purpose. What's New South
Speaker 1: Wales's story reminds me a little bit of England football,
Speaker 1: like I keep referring to at the moment Will cups
Speaker 1: on Sea and New South Wales too busy trying to
Speaker 1: copy Queensland instead of creating their own identity or accepting
Speaker 1: what their identity is. What does being a Blues player mean?
Speaker 1: And is it a sustainable culture or are they still
Speaker 1: working it out? But the good news for New South
Speaker 1: Wales and I'd be saying this if I was a player,
Speaker 1: I'd be saying this as a coach, that the series
Speaker 1: has won all They're still alive. They can still win
Speaker 1: the series, but a lot of it will depend on
Speaker 1: what players are selected and how they are asked to play.
Speaker 1: Does Ethan Strange return, does Nathan clear his stay at half?
Speaker 1: You know Moses did fantastically when he was half and
Speaker 1: he was injured in a New South Wales shirt. By
Speaker 1: the way, he played a game that I've never seen
Speaker 1: Nathan Cleary play, none of us have seen in a
Speaker 1: New South Wales shirt. And the game plan definitely needs
Speaker 1: to change, doesn't it. New South Wales don't have a
Speaker 1: talent problem, don't have a depth problem, definitely don't have
Speaker 1: an effort problem, but they definitely have a decision making
Speaker 1: culture problem, and they definitely have a lot of problems
Speaker 1: from leadership and direction. I'm going to play an historical
Speaker 1: clip fear from socials about empowerment of a team. These
Speaker 1: are in the times before he did a podcast, no
Speaker 1: microphone or anything. Have a listened to this. I'm now
Speaker 1: going to take on the question of ownership, empowerment. Spend
Speaker 1: this turn that's come into business and work and sport
Speaker 1: for about the last fifteen to twenty years. When I
Speaker 1: was a young coach of twenty three year old, I
Speaker 1: got an English student's side. I think I was the
Speaker 1: youngest England anything coaching in anything ever and I was
Speaker 1: surrounded by these players. Some of them went on to
Speaker 1: play Super League and spent some time in Australia. Some
Speaker 1: of them, I'll be totally honest with you, I spent
Speaker 1: all my time trying to justify to them that I
Speaker 1: knew about football, and I flipped it right round and
Speaker 1: I ended up asking them more questions and getting them
Speaker 1: to come up with answers, and I sort of suddenly
Speaker 1: massaged it into a game plan without even realizing it.
Speaker 1: Before I'd read the textbooks. I'd empowered those players by
Speaker 1: getting them on board. And they all have fond memories
Speaker 1: of that. But I did that because I was thinking
Speaker 1: to myself, I'm only twenty three. Are they're really going
Speaker 1: to accept what I say as a coach? So I
Speaker 1: suppose I was a little bit scared. Probably helped that
Speaker 1: experience when it became more and more confident and I
Speaker 1: became a little bit more I suppose autocratic. It helped, though,
Speaker 1: to go from one Indie extreme to the other solo,
Speaker 1: I could go back and find my level of empowerment. So,
Speaker 1: for example, if I'm coaching Poland as I have in
Speaker 1: the last couple of years, or the Ipswich Diggers, the
Speaker 1: men's representative team in the Ipswich town, I'm a very
Speaker 1: different coach. And if I'm coaching at school, and bear
Speaker 1: in mind, at school and the school programs that are
Speaker 1: run you've got year seven who were twelve and seniors
Speaker 1: are eighteen, and there's a different coaching style that applies
Speaker 1: to them along the way. The older we get as people,
Speaker 1: the more ideas we get as to how things should happen.
Speaker 1: So you've always got to have a vi as a
Speaker 1: coach to hear those opinions. But what you don't want
Speaker 1: to be is a slave to those opinions. And I
Speaker 1: always think that the best way to empower your players
Speaker 1: is to say, listen, I've got some non negotiables and
Speaker 1: nine non negotiables and things like punctuality, uniform. If you
Speaker 1: don't train, you don't play all that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: I don't think you find a good team and a
Speaker 1: good group of people who would disagree with those. But
Speaker 1: then there's other things such as where you might empower
Speaker 1: your players. So you might say, right, i've got these
Speaker 1: three players in mind, you're comfortable with them, what do
Speaker 1: you want to call them? Might be an example, particply
Speaker 1: if it's a repsite, because they might be a player
Speaker 1: half back and says, oh, at my club they called this,
Speaker 1: can we do this? Or they might be a cluster
Speaker 1: of players from that club and they can call them
Speaker 1: those names. You may have a chat with the senior
Speaker 1: players and say, listen, we've got a meal tonight, grin camp,
Speaker 1: what do you reckon meeting first and then meal or
Speaker 1: meal and then meeting that kind of thing. You may
Speaker 1: get a player or senior players in on your training
Speaker 1: planning with the coaches at times, just so they can
Speaker 1: hear what's going in. And then listen to your players
Speaker 1: because you players, particularly if they're older, it might go coach,
Speaker 1: I think we need a little bit of this, a
Speaker 1: little bit of this, and then what you can do
Speaker 1: then is sort of explain why you're making the decisions
Speaker 1: you're making and how that fits in. If you're an
Speaker 1: inexperienced or not a very good coach. Let's face it,
Speaker 1: some people are. If you empower your players too much,
Speaker 1: they will take away control. Do not underestimate players' ability
Speaker 1: to control the team. So I know for a fact
Speaker 1: the players sometimes go exactly against what their coach says
Speaker 1: because they don't agree with the game plan. And when
Speaker 1: they're in their clusters in the changing rooms, they say, listen,
Speaker 1: we'll just do this, we'll just do this, We'll just
Speaker 1: do this, and then when it works on the training field,
Speaker 1: the coach owns it, and on the playing field he says, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's good. That's what I want you to do. When
Speaker 1: it doesn't work, the coach hammers. You know, I've seen
Speaker 1: that a thousand times. So it's always good to get
Speaker 1: you players involved in the process. But in terms of
Speaker 1: answering the ownership and the empowerment question, I've seen people
Speaker 1: take it to the end degree and go the other
Speaker 1: way and give it all to the players. Well, that
Speaker 1: for me is a complete and utter recipe or disaster.
Speaker 1: I have a saying the tail count like the dog.
Speaker 1: And even in this new society that we're in, players
Speaker 1: still like boundaries. People like boundaries. Put your boundaries in
Speaker 1: and say these are man non negotiables or not willing
Speaker 1: to budge from these. Don't put too many in and
Speaker 1: you'll find the players tend to light them anyway, particularly males.
Speaker 1: We love our boundaries. We love being put in a box.
Speaker 1: But have your freedom within that box. Okay, have a
Speaker 1: think about that. If you're any questions, send it through.
Speaker 1: But to answer the ownership question, I'm all for it,
Speaker 1: but don't go dunk hole and give them loads of control,
Speaker 1: or else you'll have not. Hope you got a bit
Speaker 1: from that. I'm currently got an end of financial year
Speaker 1: sale going on for online resources. You can you can
Speaker 1: get everything I have online for one third of the price.
Speaker 1: So get in touch with me and I'll let you know.
Speaker 1: Or go to Rugby League Coach dot combat you Forward
Speaker 1: slash shop and look for the Coach Update package if
Speaker 1: you want to mentor please get in touch admin at
Speaker 1: Rugby League Coach dot comver tear you at Rugby League
Speaker 1: Coach on socials. Look, I'm going to end the pod there.
Speaker 1: I still have plenty that I want to talk about,
Speaker 1: but I'm looking at my running sheet and I think
Speaker 1: it will sound even better if I leave this what
Speaker 1: I'm about to say for a week or two, or
Speaker 1: was about to say for a week or two. I
Speaker 1: think you know what I'm hinting at there, because a
Speaker 1: lot will depend on how Origin three goes. If you
Speaker 1: want more of this kind of talk, and I host
Speaker 1: a Super League three sixty podcast with John Davidson. He
Speaker 1: got married last week, so we didn't do one, but
Speaker 1: it'll be back this week, a regular guest on Loose
Speaker 1: Carry with Zero Tackle, and I do a coach's Corner
Speaker 1: analysis on there and look out every Thursday for my
Speaker 1: article on zero tackle dot com. So please have a
Speaker 1: look at those online offers. You'd be silly not to
Speaker 1: have a look if you thought about it for a while,
Speaker 1: and obviously I think it's the best of resource out there.
Speaker 1: Rugby League Coach dot com to tay you how you've
Speaker 1: enjoyed the chats in this podcast, don't forget to get
Speaker 1: your questions to me at Rugby League Coach or admin
Speaker 1: at Rugby League coach dot com. To tay you, I
Speaker 1: love your work. Coaches, take care and I'll speak to
Speaker 1: you next week.