Our Great Coach on this episode is rugby's Damian McGrath.

Damian started life as a teacher, but then in his words “took a gamble” and moved into professional coaching. He has now coached teams across multiple countries, in both rugby league, Rugby union, as well as Rugby sevens. He has coached at Club level with the Leeds Rhinos in England’s Super League and was England’s Assistant Coach at the 2000 Rugby League World Cup. In 2015 he became Head Coach of the Samoan National 7s team leading them to a Cup success in Paris. He then took over as Head Coach of the Canadian National 7s team leading them to a historic Cup success in Singapore. He also coached national Rugby 7’s teams of Germany and Kenya.

He has just released a new book: Can You Be Fluent In Success?

The highlights are:

•  How he uses the play by Thomas Moore, A Man for all season to describe the roles a coach must play.
• The story she he shares about the bass player Herby Flowers who played the famous riff on Lou Reeds son Walk on the wildside. To illustrate how coaches get the most from the options available to them.
• His theory on the doubt percentage and how he uses this to find that little bit extra in people.
• And the idea of a mental highlights reel and how he has used it during his career to fortify his confidence.

 If you would like to send us any feedback or if you know a great coach, who has a unique story to share, then we would love to hear from you, please contact us at [email protected] or contact us through our website thegreatcoachespodcast.com

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Muffet is an American Basketball coach who led the women’s team at Notre Dame for 33 seasons.

In all she led the team to 9 final fours, 7 championship games and 2 NCAA champion ships in 2001 and 2018.

She was inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame in 2011

and the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and Legends of Coaching award in 2017.

Some of the highlights include:

• Her thoughts on empowering young women and doing this through a mixture of listening and encouraging them to use their voice to talk about things that are important to them.
•  How believing in people after they fail at something is one of the most important things a leader can do.
•  Her view that women are often not taught that it is not OK to be competitive and ambitious, and the work she does to help women understand that it is OK to be like this on the court.

If you would like to send us any feedback or if you know a great coach, who has a unique story to share, then we would love to hear from you, please contact us at [email protected] or contact us through our website thegreatcoachespodcast.com

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Doug is a former Ice Hockey Head Coach, GM, and sportscaster and he has just written a terrific new book called Draft Day: How Hockey Teams Pick Winners or Get Left Behind.

 Doug is a great story teller and some of the highlights of our discussion were;

• The importance of scouting staff, and how in Hockey they have to cover Canada, the USA. And key parts of Europe like Czech, Slovenia, Slovakia, Sweden, Finland and Russia.
•  How he talks about the tension between scouting and analytics, and describes analytics as the salt and pepper you put on your meal.
•  The way he talks about trading for the future, not the past.

And the story he tells about his biggest draft mistake and how it ended up costing him personally 30 million.

If you have any comments or feedback you can reach us at [email protected]

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Mike Hesson is New Zealand cricket coach.

He started his coaching career in his early 20’s while playing in the UK. From there he progressed through Assistant coaching before accepting a the role as Argentina’s head coach in 2003. He returned to New Zealand and became Head Coach of Otago and leading them to the 2008 one-day trophy and the 2009 T20 championship.

In 2011 he took on the job of Head Coach of Kenya before being appointed the Head Coach of the New Zealand national team, the Black Caps in 2012. He went on to take them from a One-Day international ranking of 8th to 2nd by the time he left the role in 2018. He finished his tenure as one of the most successful coaches I the nations history with highlights including a record breaking 13 game winning streak. He has gone on to coach the Kings in the IPL and Islamabad in the Pakistan Super League.

Some of the highlights include:

•  On being comfortable with silence and not feeling like you have to always fill it as a coach with information. But instead using it as a space to observe and gather information so you can be helpful later on.
• The way he uses questions to help lead people, as he believes that the majority of the team the player has the answer they just haven’t been asked the right question.
• The importance of authenticity and in his words “if I want my players to believe in me and trust me and have relationship with me, they need to know that it's actually me rather than me trying to be somebody else.”

If you would like to send us any feedback or if you know a great coach, who has a unique story to share, then we would love to hear from you, please contact us at [email protected] or contact us through our website thegreatcoachespodcast.com

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Vern is that rare individual who has coached at the elite level across multiple sports. His foundation is in Track & Field coaching, however over a career that spans almost 50 years he has worked in Major League Soccer, Major League Baseball, the NBA, Cricket, the NHL, Softball, Swimming and with San Francisco Forty Niners. Kansas City Chiefs. He is also the author of 9 books and over 100 articles. By any sense of the definition he is a coaching polymath.

In this terrific interview some of the key highlights were:

• Verns view on The importance of pointing out an athlete’s negative self-talk and working with them on reframing it.
•  How he defines mental training as mind plus muscle equals life.
•  The importance of rhythm when it comes to analyzing elite performance.
•  And How he describes his philosophy of trying to help the best be better. And how he tries to achieve this as a coach by helping prepare the athlete for the path ahead, not preparing the path for them.
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If you would like to send us any feedback or if you know a great coach, who has a unique story to share, then we would love to hear from you, please contact us at [email protected] or contact us through our website thegreatcoachespodcast.com

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Anson is an American soccer coach (in the USA it is referred to as soccer not Football) who is currently the Head Coach of the Womens Team at the University of North Carolina. Under his leadership the team has won 21 of the 31 NCAA Championships. His teams have a winning record of 91%. He has been named the NCAA coach of the year on 8 occasions.

In 1991 he also led the USA team to the first Womens World Cup. The USA have gone on to win the World Cup and 4 occasions and one-third of the players in those teams have come through Ansons team at North Carolina. Another notable alumna from his team is Sarina Weigman who led the UK to the Women's Euro 2022. Anson has firm and challenging philosophies that he has hones over many many years, and listenting to him made me reflect on the way I parent and lead. 

In this fantastic interview some of the highlights for me were:

•  How coaching men and women the same was a mistake. And his associated learning that women are better at making moral judgements based on how people are affected, and he personally would prefer to be led by someone like that.
•  The concept of the competitive cauldron which shapes the culture in his team, and is based on rankings for performance on a multitude of ares at training and in games.
•  His fantastic idea that "And if you're a female, and you're competitive, you are excoriated by your own culture, like there's something wrong with you. No, there's nothing wrong with you."
•  And How the first step on any leadership journey is learning to lead yourself, and this is where most people fail because it requires action that scares people.

If you would like to send us any feedback or if you know a great coach, who has a unique story to share, then we would love to hear from you, please contact us at [email protected] or contact us through our website thegreatcoachespodcast.com

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Aimee is an American Gymnastics coach who led the USA Team at the 2016 Rio Olympics. However, she is perhaps best known as the coach of Simone Biles, who she started coaching in 2003 when Simone was just 6. Aimee and Simone were together for 14 World Championship and Olympic Gold medals.

Simone became the first woman ever to win three straight all-around titles and the first gymnast to capture 10 gold medals at the World Championships.

As you’ll hear in this terrific interview, Aimee’s approach to gymnastic coaching breaks with tradition, and is marked by a strong sense of doing what is right for her athletes, many of who are teenagers in elite competitions.

Some of the other key highlights for me were:

• The way she has learnt about tailoring her communication to the many age groups she leads, and how she is never afraid to apologise when she gets it wrong.
• The way she deals with the anxiety that her athletes feel, in search for the perfect 10 in gymnastics
• And The way she helps her athletes control their emotions in competition, by bringing them back to their practice, and not trying to do any more than they do then.

 If you would like to send us any feedback or if you know a great coach, who has a unique story to share, then we would love to hear from you, please contact us at [email protected] or contact us through our website thegreatcoachespodcast.com

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Our Great Coach on this episode is Brendan Joyce.

Brendan played for 13 seasons in the Australian National Basketball League. Upon retiring he transitioned into coaching and led the Ballarat Miners to 2 CBA Championships.  

He then went on to coach more than 400 games in the National Basketball League, winning the championship in 2001 with the Wollongong Hawks. He Has coached at 3 Olympics, twice as an Assistant to the Australian men’s team, and once as the Head Coach of the Australian women’s team, with who he also won a bronze medal at the 2014 World Championships. And has twice been voted the NBL coach of the year. He is presently in Taiwan coaching the Kaohsiung Aquas and won the championship with them in 2022, and was subsequently voted coach of the year.

In this terrific interview some of the key highlights were:

• The way he talks about finding the line when it comes to challenging people to the right level, and how your consistency is a good tool in helping you achieve this.
• The need to develop a high level of confidence and self belief as a coach given the criticism you will experience. But also ensuring this doesn’t spill over into arrogance.
• How he encourage his players to find the balance between being aggressive to score, but also doing what they can to make the extra pass.
• And The link between good team chemistry and clarity on roles.

If you would like to send us any feedback or if you know a great coach, who has a unique story to share, then we would love to hear from you, please contact us at [email protected] or contact us through our website thegreatcoachespodcast.com

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Today’s episode is focuses on the topic of A Second Set of Eyes.

And we are joined for the conversation by Cody Royle. Cody is an author, podcast host and a Coach of elite level sports coaches and he has just written a fantastic book called a second set of eyes.

Some of the highlights from this interview with Cody are:

• The idea of helping the coaches he works with to in his words Coach free, a state where they can intuitively use their innate knowledge and not be distracted in a game situation.
•  The idea that Coaching high performance knowledge work and there are things you can di to facilitate a better environment for this work.
•  And his own purpose which he describes as wanting to rehumanize coaching

 You can find out more about Cody on his website. He is also very active on Twitter.

If you would like to send us any feedback or if you know a great coach, who has a unique story to share, then we would love to hear from you, please contact us at [email protected] or contact us through our website thegreatcoachespodcast.com

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Mike Thibault is an American Basketball coach.

He started his career as a scout with the LA Lakers in 1978, eventually becoming an Assistant Coach. He was working with the team in 1980 when they won the NBA championship. He then moved to the Chicago Bulls where he worked as a Director of Scouting and Assistant Coach, and was in the room when the Bulls chose Michael Jordan in the draft. He has gone on to work with the Atlanta Hawks, New York Knicks, Seattle SuperSonics, the Milwaukee Bucks and the Connecticut Sun, as well as being part of the basketball staff for the USA women’s team that won the Olympic Gold medal in 2008. He was most recently the Head Coach of the Washington Mystics in the WNBA and led that team to the 2019 championship.

This is a master class of an interview and some of the take aways for me were:

• How honesty is the number attribute that a coach at any level needs. And how as the leader you needed to bring in people to be honest with you.
• How his time working at the LA Lakers when Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul Jabbar taught him that its never about you as the coach but instead how well the team work together.
• How you priority should be getting better at your current job not looking for your next job, and he talks about how he had to learn this early in his career.
•  The importance of emotional control even if it is not something that you are particularly good at.

If you would like to send us any feedback or if you know a great coach, who has a unique story to share, then we would love to hear from you, please contact us at [email protected] or contact us through our website thegreatcoachespodcast.com

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