How to empower players

At Lichfield RFC, we have implemented a player-led skills programme with our U18s.

There have been some bumps along the way, but we were determined to support our players to have an amazing season and learn a lot.

The seniors play in Midlands leagues at level 6. The Colts have around 60 players and will be running two squads next season (Red and Green) in the North Midlands Leagues, at levels 1 and 3.

How it works

We train as a squad from 7pm to 8.15pm, aiming to keep a futher 15 minutes for players to develop their skills.

Two months before the season started, the coaches led various skills elements for the players, with the focus on one skill for the duration of the 15 minutes.

The front row might focus on scrum technique, the second row and back rows on lineout technique, or tackle and jackal, and the back three on taking the high ball.

Each session’s skill element was changed or developed over the first four weeks. This set the standard with the players, and gave them an idea of what types of skills their position needs in order to be successful.

After the first four weeks, which covered eight sessions, we decided to stand back more, and let the players choose what skills they wanted to work on.

We saw no drop in numbers staying for the skills session, and the work rate and quality remained high, despite no coach involvement – a testament to the players.

Our teams end their Thursday sessions with a ’captain’s run’, where the coaches will hand over their team run to the captains and leadership group for 15 minutes, so they can go through their plans to attack and defend for the weekend games.

Bumps and solutions

One of the challenges we found was keeping to time in our elements of the session, to ensure 15 minutes for skills at the end.

If you can do it, it pays off. Looking back, it might have been better if we had started this a few years ago! The only way to improve skills is to repeat them continually, in several situations and under varying degrees of pressure – this approach certainly helps.

If players struggle to come up with a skills area to work on, coaches and senior leaders are always there to help. We have started to see individuals ask about improving very specific elements of their game, which we are able to do one-to-one.

After four weeks of being part of the core session, we have now made the skills section voluntary, so if they don’t want to stay, that’s up to them. However, we have found that, because their peers are trying to improve, they, generally, also want to keep up.

Reflections

Empowerment means giving decisions to the players. But it can’t be done without plenty of support to start with, and guidance on what ’good’ might look like.

The key areas that we’ve noticed in terms of development are:

1. Our leadership group is a great sounding board. These players are now taking a significant lead in the skills sessions and directing where they might want some coaching input.
2. Players working together in the same positions to help each other get better is brilliant to see. This creates an environment where players want to improve.
3. A real focus of basic skill development that we don’t get time to practice has been key to our thoughts as coaches.