The Basic Premises

Prior to diving into the individual Personas I think it would be wise to make a general statement, and to establish some sort of Basic Premises, about kids in America playing Rugby.

As previously stated, we do not belong to a Rugby culture. Absolutely from exposure to the game and less obviously by the Cult of Personality so prevalent in the media's coverage of not only professional sport, but scholastic and amateur sport as well. This, I believe, is anathema to Rugby as a game and as a distinct sub-culture.

However, and most paradoxically, it does take an individual, to play Rugby. Focusing here in America, Rugby is not widely known and there are unfortunately many mis-conceptions of the game.

Entertainment media has portrayed the Rugby player as a neer-do-well lunkhead, al la Chris Farley's "Tommy Boy"to a rough interpretation of some sort of Gladiatorial match shown in the Heath Ledger film "The Three Feathers".

These opposing depictions could, in fact, not be any further from the truth. More on that in later posts.

So making the choice to step outside the comfortable and accepted norms of choice of sport, football, basketball, wrestling etc.; especially for players in their teen age years, requires a strong individual.

If there are four basic Personas in my thesis, than there must be some Basic Premises;
Those that choose to play are secure in their individuality.

This idea begs some sort of maturity level by already established criteria. Not so! Acting as an individual in no way establishes any level of maturity. Maturity has nothing to do with this Blog and my Premises on Personas.

What it does provide is a fundamental baseline for building player - coach rapport and providing the Coach with a jumping off point to more accurately identify the Persona and methods by which the positives of the present Personas can brought to the fore.

This bent toward individualtiy can be best "amplified" and directed to the benefit of the team and growth of the player towards an "Elite" Premise.

What does it truly mean to be Elite? The better question, for our purposes here is What does it mean to be Rugby Elite?

More on this Basic Premise in the next posting!

Personalities

Twenty years of playing plus three strictly as a coach and it always amazes me that "there is one" on every team!

Be it the clown, the leader et cetera et cetera. But in all honesty there are really four basic types of personality. Just like Carl Jung's Archetypes! I believe that these types can be found on any team. The next few posts will be dedicated to those types.

They are as follows, under my own labels;

1. The Worker
2. The Superstar
3. The WTF am I doing here!
4. The Under Achiever

These Personas are not exclusive. One player can be each to a varying degree, but all players will have a dominant trait. I believe it is the first responsibility of the coach to identify this dominant trait in his players then to find a way to pull that dominant trait, if it is a positive one {like The Worker or the Superstar} to the fore, and in the other circumstance to replace the negative trait, if it is dominant.

While I am not a fan of "cuts" and do sincerely believe that Rugby offers a place for everyone; a cancer is a cancer and must be eliminated. As early as possible the best. Hence, the primary responsibility of identifying the personality as quickly as possible.

Rugby, by the nature of the game, offers some very unique opportunities to examine the character of a person. The game is fast paced, decision must be made on the fly. There is no luxury of a huddle or prolonged stoppages as a general rule.

In the coming posts describing what I believe to be each of the above Personas and the resulting approach is almost exclusively based upon an adversarial approach.

The game is not for the faint of heart or indecisive. There will be no quarter given on the pitch and to give any quarter as the coach, within reason {player safety and health is the penultimate duty of a coach}, is doing the player a huge disservice. Quite possibly putting them in jeopardy of physical injury.

So there you have it. Next post: The Worker

Where to start?

Usually people start at the begining. But there is too much to cover, so bear with me as I will tend to jump around.

So the picture is where this will all start. On Saturday 24 April 2010 the Winchester Under 19 team recorded it's first victory!

The Under 19 Team was formed three years ago. Now, before all of you armchair coaches start saying, "Wow, you must suck!" Think of this...

These young men have not grown up in a "rugby culture". Imagine being right handed all of your life and then someone showing up trying to teach you to write caligraphy with your left hand, and oh by the way; there is going to be a contest in three weeks, and one after that the next week and so on!

So how do you change their mind set? Time, adversity and effort. Lots in equal parts, sometimes...

Okay, so here goes nothing! Blogging has been around for quite a while so I guess better late than never.

After playing competetively for twenty years, my shoulder said "Enough!" and I retired. Happily enough there was no withdrawl. When a group of us started the Winchester Rugby Club (Winchester VA) a member insisted on starting a youth program at the same time.

Good thing he did! We have Under 19, Under 15 and Under 11 teams. I am the coach or the coordinator for all of these programs.

So what am I going to Blog on? Well, working with the kids and how they are taking to the game of course!

It has been interesting to see thier development and how the game has changed since I started "rucking and running" back in 1987.

I don't imagine this to be a daily thing, so if you like it, be patient there will be plenty to read and comment on!