Stranger danger and the problem of pressured coaching

Would you trust your child with a total stranger? Does that then happen when someone drops their kid off at rugby training for the first time?

In almost all cases, a parent will stay and watch. The child will also be with their friends. Plus, the team will be part of large club structure. Yet, is that enough? Who’s taking the session?

Well, that’s normally someone like you or me. Which then makes me think, are we qualified enough to look after someone else’s child on a weekly basis for sometimes up to four hours in a week.

Again, putting it into context, most parents do stay to watch their younger children. But when it comes to 11 year olds, the sideline training watchers become thinner on the ground. Are those left acting as minders enough ensure the coaching is safe and appropriate?

The other week, John Amaechi, a former NBA player and now well-known social commentator, asked the same question of all sports. He said that we need to be very careful who is looking after our children. That’s because those coaches will be putting pressure on those players to perform. Whatever that level of pressure, we need to ask ourselves, is that coach ready in themselves to be able to do that in the appropriate fashion.



We need to keep asking those questions for the sake of our children, or ourselves too. I don’t think that stops either when we are coaching adults as well. Though there are different vulnerabilities and not the same level of duty of care, an adult-to-adult relationship must be supportive in a sporting environment, whether it requires love or tough-love.

Amaechi says that often a coach is only qualified to coach because they have attended a low-level weekend course. We all recognise that barely scratches the surface of the sophisticated roles for a coach. We also recognise that if the coach-qualification burden was increased, then it’s quite possible that there would be fewer coaches, and fewer teams available.

How do we square that circle? If you are reading this, while we can all improve, I’m going to suggest that you are not at the lumpy end of the coaching spectrum. You maintain your fitness to coach by reading, reflecting and consistently learning. Others, for many reasons, don’t dedicate the time or listening to the right messages to become the sort of coach you would leave your children with.

At around the same time that I saw John Amaechi question, Sonja McLaughlan, a TV and radio sports journalist who has a strong interest in rugby questioned why an U11 tournament didn’t have cups. While a number of coaches came in on the side of development, the scary thing was the number of coaches who were completely off the mark.