Support for coaches

Almost everyone gets involved in coaching in some way or another. As a regular player you may be asked to help at school or college or in a demonstration events, parents who know something about the game may be asked to assist at training, if you study PE at any level you'll need to know about coaching plans, and obviously you may end up becoming a coach.

There is quite a lot of help available on the internet, especially for introductory coaching, and there may soon be a whole lot more as the RFU are looking at providing their coach support through the new www.rugbycoachingdrills.com website. This has been running for a year already as a commercial service, but that could change over the next few months. Quite how is a little difficult to work out from a long but otherwise unhelpful press release from the RFU - but basically we'll know more from about January.

In the meanwhile - and especially if you ever have to do any coaching with a bunch of beginners - US Rugby's Rookie Rugby website (http://www.rookierugbyclub.com/home) is well worth a look. This supports their version of tag, and has lots of videos (including this wonderful news report about a girls rugby team based in the famously dodgy area of Harlem, in New York) but it is especially useful as it has three weeks of lesson plans for introducing rugby to children of all ages (page down to number 7 in the list of resources), including warm-up drills and game activities. So if you ever have to work with develop a coaching programme for any group of young players, especially if its tag, its all there on a plate for you.

<<<< A number of other coaching resources can be found in the list of links in the left-hand column.