Rugby League Coaching Manuals

With Ray Unsworth from his RLCM Book - An Approach to Coaching Rugby League - So you are head coach at a top club and it's day one. What are you going to do to create an environment that is conducive to producing winning performances?

Coaching is about delivering a service to your athletes, your players and the team.

However, in order to deliver a quality service and create a performance environment you have first got to know and fully understand what your starting point is.

Coaching at this level is a 'we' thing. You cannot create or deliver the right environment in which to consistently produce winning football on your own.

At the outset, you need to also carefully consider the people you put in place, the make up of your coaching staff. What is it that makes them tick?

Having put them in place, are they really capable of doing a job for you because performance teams cannot afford to carry any passengers?

You need to know what their strengths are and where they pull up short.

Whatever role you've given them, every member of your staff must be clearly accountable for their piece of the action. If you are to be successful, they must add value and if they don't, then they shouldn't be there.

In order to create a performance environment that is positive and distraction free you need also to consider every situation as it arises and provide solutions that best manage both your staff and your players.

What you are actually trying to create is ‘One Team, One Spirit, One Vision'.

Should you do that, then it is at this point that you can start to consider what is it that makes a winning culture.

Experience shows that it starts with you and your staff and the environment we have just spoken about.

It is about your philosophy as to how the game should be played and your shared vision.

Remember one team, one spirit, and one vision.

These are the non-negotiable principles about how you operate. Having shared goals and ambition, desire and determination and positive actions are the attributes and qualities that contribute to winning.

On the other hand, what is it that destroys winning?

Compromising your values leads to inconsistent practice and your players will pick up on that immediately.

Implementing quick-fix solutions does not solve problems and consist of negative rather than positive actions. Now those two words, positive and negative, need to be considered further......