Try at Training: UNO!
Amy Wigley, a coach in women's rugby, presents a game she uses in sessions.
Terms like “gamification” and “video-game style sessions” are dotted all over the place in coaching right now.
Whilst I understand the benefits and have bought into a lot of the practices, I struggled to hold all these different rules, points, and constraints in my brain while actually trying to coach.
So began a search to find ways to offload some of the cognitive load while retaining the benefits of the approach. I wanted to find a way to physically put the rules into the hands of the players.
Whiteboards seemed promising; but our space is solely outside, I drive a tiny hairdryer on wheels, hate the clutter, the pens never work, and I swear the rain knows exactly when I get them out. It had the potential to be another problem rather than a solution
Enter: UNO.
I bought a blank deck of playing cards for £3.50 (Amazon stocks them) and pulled out 14 cards. I wrote different skills on the cards that I wanted to see displayed and practiced. These are normally designed around our training block focus, but I also carry blanks and a general pack which includes prompts like:
Receive a kick without it bouncing
Kick to find grass
Complete a miss pass
Score from a set move
Turn a defender’s hips to the corner of the pitch (language my team knows, encouraging footwork before contact)
Form a 3-man pod and use them in an attack
Make a tackle on the first receiver (I put this one in twice to encourage more consistent pressure)
For ease of travel, I store the packs in a business card holder, with a post-it wrapped around to separate the packs. They’re labelled so I know what Im looking at.
I vary the levels of difficulty on the cards. Some are written with one specific person in mind; others are applicable to the whole squad. (If you’re one of my athlete’s reading this, skip the next sentence….) You can definitely be sneaky with the shuffling in this version of UNO.
Set up the game
The rugby rules can be adapted to your chosen levels.
Split in the group into two teams.
Shuffle/organise the cards for each team.
Give each team a stack of cards.
Allow each team the chance to have a quick strategy huddle.
Each time you play the game, vary which player you give the stack of cards to. This gives different players the chance to lead the huddles.
Terminology: In the current group that I coach, we speak about three ways to score - ‘over’ (the defence), ‘round’(the edges), and ‘through’(the defence).
The rules of the game
During gameplay, the principles of UNO apply:
How to Win: The first team to successfully execute all their skills is the UNO Champion.
Step one - Execute: Create an opportunity and complete the skill written on your card.
Step Two – Discard: Hand the card to a coach. If the coach agrees you executed it properly, you get rid of the card.
Step Three – Jeopardy: Down to one card? Everyone yells “UNO!” This adds jeopardy and generates pressure on the other team.
This game works successfully for me because most people already know the rough principles of UNO, meaning the rules are embedded. It effectively offloads my cognitive load of tracking levels and goals.
Tip for success: For your literal, black-and-white thinkers, you may wish to pre-frame that this is “in the style” of UNO, otherwise they can get caught up on the differences.
Variations to Try
Mirror Decks (Tactical Warfare): Give identical decks to both teams, and explicitly tell them they have the same cards. Players will start trying to guess which card the opposition is going after, using that info to block the attack.
It results in more scanning, better reading of an attack, and ultimately more detail in communication than any other prompt I’ve found. We love some tactical warfare!
Power Cards: Give the teams special cards. This might be an “Extra Time” card (to add a minute to the half when they recognize they have momentum), or a “Huddle” card (scaffolding them to take control of calling their own huddles). You could bend and adapt this concept to almost anything.
Player-Authored Decks: Ask every individual write a card and add them all together into a deck. Suddenly, the whole team is working to create an opportunity for a specific individual to execute a cross-field kick. (Watch out here, though: sometimes they try to break the game and all write “make one pass”).
Challenge to the readers: I’m sure there’s a clever way to add “+4” or “Wild” cards in there, too. I’ll leave that to your creativity!
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