Formal and Informal Coach Development
Ella Mitchell is a coach in the south of England. She discusses coach education, including the joys and the challenges, and her approach to coaching
I’ve been assistant coach at Hampstead RFC Womens+ section. Although, I am taking a little bit of a step back this season, but I’ll never be a stranger!
The team is named Hampstead RFC Womens+. It was a decision the section took a couple of years ago. I think that they saw it as a more inclusive title for some of our non binary players.
Coaching Journey
I had done a level 1 coaching course many years ago when the club I played for was quite newly established and we struggled sometimes with gaps in our coaching. Often players were having to step in and fill in, and this became my first steps into coaching.
The coaching course was ok, but I was the only woman on the course. Looking back on it, I don’t think that it was the most positive introduction to coaching.
The coach educator, who I am sure was very knowledgeable, didn’t seem to have the best empathy with female players.
I am pleased to say my experience of my level 2 coaching course was vastly different! Things felt like they had improved a lot by then, we were in a mixed cohort but there was a group of approximately 10 women on the course. There was a good mix and sharing of ideas and coaching styles.
I guess like many players I took my first steps into coaching when I had an injury, I had just made the move to Wasps and managed to break both my thumbs in the preseason.
I was unlucky as it happened just as we were in the run up to start of season! I felt quite miserable about things.
I had been involved in coaching in the junior’s section at my previous club, Hampstead RFC and so I took on more of a role with coaching there.
I remember one of the other coaches demonstrating how to pass and catch- using me as a demo buddy. It is no mean feat to catch a ball with two hands in plaster!
The section was new, so we started out with just a handful of children and had grown to nearly 100 by the time I stopped coaching with the section.
Some of the young people I coached have progressed and now play for senior sides and are now mostly taller than me! This always fills me with an immense sense of pride.
As I was still recovering from the thumbs and keen to keep active, I started coaching to help the fledgling women team at the university I was working at.
The University of East London was at the time trying to start a women’s team. Myself and one of the lecturers (Professor Marcia Wilson) in the sports department coached the team.
I didn’t really realise how special this experience was, but as I have progressed in my career (Librarian by day and Loosehead by night), I have become incredibly grateful to the connections I made during my time in coaching.
We also had some players with great potential, many of them continuing to play for many years after in local clubs and some even up to premiership level.
I will always be proud of this experience we took a group of players most didn’t know what a rugby ball was to form a team and a squad that beat quite a few of the teams within the BUCs league.
Challenges and Paying it Forward
Balancing full time work, coaching and playing was always a challenge. I loved it so it made it worthwhile, but when my mum died suddenly and quite unexpectedly my perspective changed substantially.
I was tough on myself up for devoting so much time to rugby and not having the best relationship with her in the years before she died.
It shook me and I started to take a step back from rugby both coaching and playing. I found that I needed to take some time out. I stopped playing and coaching and was thinking about retiring from rugby altogether but a friend persuaded me to carry on playing but perhaps to take the pressure off level wise.
So, I went back to play at Hampstead and when I finally retired from playing just before Covid, I started to take up coaching again.
It has always been important to me that women such as myself, unsure, uncertain and not stereotypically perceived as sporty, have the opportunity to play rugby.
For me, like many others, rugby has been a source of stability in my life. This is something I wanted to pay forwards. I hope I have done this and inspired others to hang in there.
It can feel difficult when you don’t always get selected for a squad, but it can build resilience as well and a desire/motivation to keep building on your skills which is so important to tap into.
What are the Sessions Like?
I would like to think if someone came to one of my sessions, they would see smiles on players faces, lots of activity and player engagement. People of all abilities enjoying learning how to play rugby or develop their skills.
They would probably hear a range of conversations going on followed by a lot of shouts of ‘with you’ ‘on your right/left- not that left/right the other one!’, ‘long’, ‘short’ as we get the session underway.
The community and players make the squads, so laughter and chatting are often an important part of the start of any session. I try to make games fun and engaging, sometimes it’s funny I have a vision of how a game will go and the players will always bring in another angle.
Sometimes some of the best games are the ones that actually don’t go to my plan but with player feedback and adaptions work really well for completely different reasons.
I am more of a forward’s coach and so I will always prefer coaching some of the rucks, scrum, lineout activities more. It is more my zone of confidence.
I like games that help to simulate a match situation as far as possible and encourage players to think about what they would do in a match.
I aim to enable them to make decisions in a match based on what they may have learnt at training. They have to be the ones on the pitch making the decisions and if we have had the opportunity to walk through these scenarios then this helps prepare.
What to Say to Your Players Who are Thinking About Starting to Coach
As a coach, we can encourage players to start coaching, refereeing or volunteering in other ways. To any player who wants to coach I would say:
Give it a go, experience will teach you a lot. Some of the CPD coaching courses will give you a good flavour of coaching.
You can learn a lot of from others, but it is sometimes useful to remember not to compare yourself too much, we are all a little bit different so you can pick and choose and adjust what works for you.
It is important to develop your style and remember it will be different for each of us, I am naturally quite a quiet person, so it is important for me to remember a whistle 😊
I am also quite scatty so important to write myself a note to remember my whistle!! We all make mistakes, players within the women’s game are often quite appreciative of people who volunteer/give up some of their time to help facilitate their learning and opportunity to play at the grass roots level.
Try not to take things too personally when you do make mistakes, it’s important to learn from things, sometimes a game just won’t work.
Also, different groups of players engage in games in different ways, you may have one group absolutely fly and you are able to get through progressions, but another group of players may not be able to work through the progression in the same way.
Try to be kind to yourself and your players. Players are often coming from a long day at work, so it is really important to be mindful of that, perfection isn’t always possible.
Getting out and being active is sometimes the best remedy and you are there to facilitate that as a coach at an amateur level, but sometimes you have had a long day too.
Learning how to be adaptable is hard in the moment and does take time and experience, but it is a really helpful skill to develop in my experience.
Coach Development
Meeting fellow coaches at CPD events has helped me develop. It is always so helpful to trade tips and tricks/ share experience.
You can always learn so much from others. I wish I had been part of the mentoring approach that the RFU have now set up for coaching, sometimes it can feel a bit difficult to know if you are getting things right.
Getting feedback from players can be really helpful, but can also feel a bit daunting. It can help you to build your coaching style. I
t can be hard to take negative feedback, but also if it is given in constructive ways can be very helpful and valuable.
I am not a perfect coach, we do not always have a perfect training venue, weather, the player turnout and not every session will go perfectly.
I learn so much from the players I have had the privilege to coach over the years. When a game is not going to plan, try asking the players for feedback can make changes to the dynamics of the game and instantly you start to see the change.
Go to other clubs and observe coaching sessions run by other coaches. I am very lucky. Through work I was able to set up an opportunity to go and watch a training session at Saracens women’s ahead of their clash with their premiership match against Leicester Tigers last season.
It was really good to see a session at this level, it reminded me that we set up games for players to practice and make those mistakes, even at that level of the game. Squads are always learning.
This experience also made me really made me appreciate the differences between coaching at an amateur level club compared to a premiership team where you know the players are going to be able to make the training sessions and can plan on that basis.
We have all been in a situation where you have planned a session for the forwards and only 3 show up on the night.
These experiences have also helped me learn as a coach, having to adapt and change coaching plans on the go have helped me develop adaptability and resilience as a coach.
The level 2 course was probably the most impactful, course wise. It made me think a bit differently about the role of a coach and developing that growth mindset.
One of the things I wished I had built is a bit of an ongoing network with the other female coaches from the course, but we were from various different places in the south east.
Often it is the bits outside formal coaching courses that are the most impactful, the opportunities to meet other coaches, either at matches or we have run some joint sessions always helps you develop.
We ran a joint training session for with another club in our league in lieu of a preseason friendly, it was great to work with coaches from the other club learn from them and develop confidence in coaching another teams players.
Recently I met a player from the other team at an event and she was giving me feedback on how great the session was to be able to practice against a live scrum and to have peer feedback and coaching during that session.
If there are more opportunities to set up mentoring/peer coaching support I think that this could be a really impactful way to learn for a lot of coaches.