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"If you can't connect with people don't expect to make a change"

WARNING: This podcast does include swearing.

Johnny O'Connor is a strength and conditioning coach with Connacht Rugby. He previously played for the province as well as Wasps and Ireland. In this podcast he chats about:

Part 1

His background from playing rugby with Connacht & Ireland to S&C soach as the world's oldest intern at Arsenal.
Johnny's key takeaways from working with coaches such as Liam Hennessy, Craig White and Warren Gatland.
The three key aspects for developing young players - discipline, work ethic and the ability to accept failure and how important it is to set that standard as the coach.

Part 2 - The Deep Dive

The importance of creating connections with players but needing to understand yourself to be able to do that.
Cultural differences between soccer and rugby.
The influence of Shane McDonald
The environment at Wasps in the early 2000's
The psychological and emotional toll that builds over a rugby career
What rugby can learn from football

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In the podcast this week, Jess is joined by Russell Earnshaw from the Magic Academy and Dusty Miller from the English Institute of Sport. 

In a summer where not much happened on the pitch, off the pitch was a busy hive of hiring for the top rugby clubs. The team discusses the prevalence of ex-professional players transitioning into coaching and the upsides and downsides that come with this approach. 

In a discussion around hiring and diversity, they also chat about previous RFU coach development for women and ways to enable more diversity within coaching. They also chat about coaching pathways, mentoring and all things coach development.  

@russellearnshaw 
@DustyMiller_A13

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Liza Bird Burgess and LJ Lewis discuss a round of questions about the practicalities of the game. In this episode, they are with Karen Findlay, known to most in the game as Jocko, who is joint-head coach at Harlequins Ladies.

Jocko captained Scotland over 50 times and played in three World Cups, winning 85 caps. She went on to coach Richmond Ladies to five titles in the Premiership before joining London-based Quins in 2017, leading then to cup success in her first season.

She also works as a Chief Superintendent with the Metropolitan Police.

In this episode, they discuss the following:

• Shared head coach responsibility: the pros and cons.
• How much player input do you allow in developing the way you play?
• How do you create your own identity in an already established brand?
• What are the overlaps with a professional career and the coaching world: Leadership, strategic direction, people management, language.
• How do you use these overlaps to your advantage?
• How do you transition a player to front row?

To find out more about this podcast and many others, go to Rugby Coach Weekly

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This week in the first-ever Breaking The Pane podcast Jess Bunyard is joined by Lichfield Ladies Head Coach Maria Crowfoot and UK Coaching's Coach Developer Jenny Coady. 

The team discuss the recent BBC Sport survey into the social media abuse and sexism experienced by elite British sportswomen. One striking result to emerge from the survey was that 65% of the athletes had suffered from sexism but only 10% felt comfortable enough to report it. 

The team also share some of their own personal horror stories and discuss how the sports community can make progress into an accepting and diverse landscape.

Read more about the survey here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/53593459

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/53593465

Contact the team:
@RugbyCoachJess
@MariaCrowfoot7
@JennyCoady10

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Dan Cottrell catches up with John Widdowson, described by Phil Llewellyn as the coach observer he is most scared of...in a good way.

John is a Match Official Development Officer for the RFU. He is a RFU level 4 coaching qualification and has been a pathway coach and age-grade coach. He is also a World Rugby Trainer/RFU Senior Developer/ Mentor delivering a full range of CPD Coach/Referee education courses and support services. And he is currently a PhD student with the University of Edinburgh.

We discussed the following areas:

• What does the Match Official Development exactly do?
• What can coaches do better in their interactions with referees?
• What makes John's questions so "scary"?
• What can we do more efficiently on our coaching courses?
• What's the PhD research and how can we help?

If you want to drop John a line, his email is: [email protected]

To find out more about this podcast and many others, go to Rugby Coach Weekly

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Host Phil Llewellyn with guests Danny Milton, Darren Fearn and Will Garnett review some of the many great podcasts, books, articles and webinars from the last week.

The team pick out the key takeaways from each piece of great content and say how to use it on the pitch, at all the levels of the game.

This week:

• The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact – By Dan Heath
• The High Performance Podcast – Jake Humphrey and Damian Hughes talk with Shaun Wane
• Eleven Rings – By Phil Jackson

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED

• The Sports Performance Show – Dan Abrahams Sports Psychology and Coaching
• The Magic Academy – Rusty talks with Jeremy Holt
• The Sports Psych Show – Joan Ryan – Team Chemistry
• Way of Champions  - Be the Best Player for the Team, not the Best Player on The Team: A Conversation with 4x Olympian Bo Hanson

COMING UP

• The Magic Academy – Redundancy Support Webinar with Lucy Moore and Alex Stacey. Thursday 20th August 7pm (hosted on the Coach Development Platform on Coach Logic)
• UK Coaching Curious Coaches Club – Coaching 5-8s the nature of little ones Monday, 17th August 14:15 – 15:15
• Inspiring Coaching – Brian Ashton Webinar. Wednesday, 19th August 19:00
• Nicholas Anelka Documentary on Netflix – Anelka: Misunderstood
• The Test on Amazon Prime
• Radical Cander – Kim Scott
• Three team and organisational culture myths and their consequences for sport psychology research and practice – McDougall, Ronkainen, Richardson, Littlewood & Nesti 
• 13 Minutes to the Moon – BBC Podcast on Apollo 11 (Season 1) and Apollo 13 (Season 2)

To find out more about this podcast and many others, go to Rugby Coach Weekly

To find out more about our Partner Club offer

CLICK HERE

Also, tap into the library of 4,000 pages of activities, advice, tactics and tips to help you become the best rugby coach you can be!

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Dan Cottrell speaks to Jess Bunyard, Andy Stevens and Jamie Green about their approaches to Return to Play.

Jess is director of women and girls rugby and RDO at Huddersfield YMCA RFC. Andy is chair of mini and juniors at Ellingham and Ringwood RFC. Jamie is director of rugby at Royston RFC. They all coach across a wide range of age groups.

I asked them the following questions:

1. What's exciting you most about returning to coach, not just RTP?
2. What are the main challenges for your players in RTP...and your solutions?
3. Should we be concerned about potential modifications to the game on our RTP?
4. We hope we have become leaner coaches with all this time to reflect. What have you cut from your coaching diet and what's replaced it?
5. Return to contact...what does this look like for your teams?
6. What do you think rugby will look like come September...

Three links mentioned in the podcast:

• The Roundup Rodeo: Reviews of podcasts and webinars with Phil Llewellyn
• Dave Sharkey: The power of stories
• The Magic Academy: A huge catalogue of interviews with a wide range of top coaches

To find out more about this podcast and many others, go to Rugby Coach Weekly

To find out more about our Partner Club offer

CLICK HERE

Also, tap into the library of 4,000 pages of activities, advice, tactics and tips to help you become the best rugby coach you can be!

Send us Fan Mail

Host Phil Llewellyn with guests Giselle Mather and Jo Yapp review some of the many great podcasts, books, articles and webinars from the last week.

The team pick out the key takeaways from each episode and how to use it on the pitch, at all the levels of the game.

This week:

• The Sports Psych Show - Lisa Alexander - Reflections on Developing a World-Class Winning Coaching Programme
•  Don't tell me the Score with Simon Mundy – Interview with Cath Bishop

WHAT YOU MIGHT HAVE MISSED

• Way of Champions  - How to Overcome Disruption and Build More Team Unity with Dr Wade Gilbert and Dr Jerry Lynch
• The Magic Academy – Rusty talks with James Gee 
•  Don't tell me the Score with Simon Mundy – Interview with Sam Allardyce
• The Sports Initiative Podcast with Michael Wright – Interview with Danny Talbot
• Don't tell me the Score with Simon Mundy – Interview with Mel Marshall
• The Sports Psych Show - Dr Scott Goldman Interviews Dan Abrahams

COMING UP

• The Sports Psych Show - Dr Natalie Campbell - Pop Psychology Friday 7th August
• UK Coaching Curious Coaches Club - The New Season Ahead (Return to Training and Competition after COVID 19) Monday, 10 August 14:15 - 15:15
• UK Coaching Workshop - Understanding Unconscious Bias Wednesday 12th Aug 09:30 – 11:00

To find out more about this podcast and many others, go to Rugby Coach Weekly

To find out more about our Partner Club offer

CLICK HERE

Also, tap into the library of 4,000 pages of activities, advice, tactics and tips to help you become the best rugby coach you can be!

Send us Fan Mail

Si Nainby delivers a two-part podcast with Mark Williams. He is interim Lead Strength & Conditioning Coach for Basketball England, a Lecturer in Sports Science and former Head of S&C for GB Basketball & Southend United FC.

1. The commute: Some quickfire takeaways
Mark's story from semi-pro rugby player to a professional S&C coach
Lessons from the Covid lockdown
The value in focussing on the basics of movement

2. The Deep Dive
The story behind Mark's PhD and why player autonomy became central to his thinking
The Paradox of S&C - How can the controlled environment of the gym carry over to the chaos of sport?
Completing the circle - Marks' evolution of thinking, from questioning the importance of S&C to the role he now sees it playing in developing players

A note from Si:
At the end, we talk about degeneracy and I had redundancy on my brain, as I'd been reading about it that day, and gave the wrong definition. This is what I should have said: Degeneracy is the ability of elements that are structurally different to perform the same function or yield the same output.

LINKS FROM THE PODCAST
Basketball England 8 week Athletic Development Program
Basketball England Parkour Videos
Tom Farrow YouTube
Robin Eager RFU VIDEOS
Dan Cleather book

To find out more about this podcast and many others, go to Rugby Coach Weekly

To find out more about our Partner Club offer

CLICK HERE

Also, tap into the library of 4,000 pages of activities, advice, tactics and tips to help you become the best rugby coach you can be!

Send us Fan Mail

Host Phil Llewellyn with guests Aaron James, James Farndon and Paul Baty review some of the many great podcasts, books, articles and webinars from the last week.

The team pick out the key takeaways from each episode and how to use it on the pitch, at all the levels of the game.

The main three reviews are:

• English Rugby Shake-up – News article
• Ben Mercer - Fringes: Life on the Edge of Professional Rugby
• Man Down: The Anti-Man-Up Movement - Jamie Clements talks Positive Masculinity with Dr Dan Guinness

COMING UP

• UK Coaching - Back To Coaching: Teaching Games For Understanding - Tom Hartley Friday 7th August – 12 - 1pm
• The Sports Coaching Podcast - Contextual Interference - with Dan Walker
• Rio Ferdinand and Owen Farrell | Talking mental health for Heads Up #SoundOfSupport
• Walker Talks Coaching Podcast By Dan Walker - Andi Manley: Resilience, Soft Skills & Setting Standards

To find out more about this podcast and many others, go to Rugby Coach Weekly

To find out more about our Partner Club offer

CLICK HERE

Also, tap into the library of 4,000 pages of activities, advice, tactics and tips to help you become the best rugby coach you can be!