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00:00Would you like to tell us your name and a little bit about yourself?
00:10Yeah, so my name is Rachel Taylor and I am currently the head coach at Cullen Bay Rugby Football Club.
00:18What got you into coaching, Rach?
00:21So, I guess I probably had a bit of a decision to make coming to the odds at the end of my playing career.
00:29And I'd worked in the Welsh Rugby Union for a few years already in the community coaching department
00:35and it was just something I was really enjoying so it sort of seemed like the next, I guess, logical step really from playing into the coaching role.
00:45Okay, the theme we're going to discuss over the next 20 minutes is around player engagement and retention at senior level.
00:51Can you just talk us through a couple of key elements for you as a coach?
00:55What's the key factors of engaging players at a club?
01:00Yeah, I think it's probably a bit of a learning curve for me really.
01:04I've probably only known really most of my senior year rugby at quite a high performance level.
01:12So, a lot of the engagement there is obviously like a want or a desire to play for your national team
01:19or win trophies, get promotion, etc, etc.
01:23So, I've come from that kind of quite competitive background, I suppose.
01:29And then the transition into coaching with a second division team was quite different
01:36and I think I probably approached that probably quite in the wrong way to start with.
01:41I think I assumed everyone had the same performance mindset, I suppose, when I went into that
01:47rather than seeing it from a community point of view.
01:51And that really did probably have quite a profound effect on how I then coached
01:56and had to change my sort of style, if you like, and become much more of that engaging coach
02:02to realise what those guys actually wanted out of their Saturday afternoons.
02:07What do you think a player's expectations are of a coach at community level?
02:14I think at community level, it's about creating a relationship, having a buy-in to the club
02:20and probably that level of commitment.
02:24I think one of the biggest things I see week to week, I suppose, in community rugby
02:31is how much it means for the guys to be able to be freed up on a Saturday to go and do that.
02:36So, whether that's from sort of, you know, daddy daycare or work commitments,
02:40you know, they do put in a lot of time to try and get that Saturday afternoon
02:46and I think they probably expect that of the coach as well.
02:49You know, I think that was probably one part of where I took it.
02:54You know, like developing into the year two is really important for me to make every session
02:58and make every game because that buy-in with our players was pretty key.
03:05You know, just touching on environment really,
03:08how did you go about creating a positive environment for the players to thrive in?
03:13When I started there, Coventry had a pretty rough season,
03:18so they'd gone from the highs of promotion to the lows of realising that
03:24potentially the level of that league was actually quite tough
03:28and they'd had quite a number of defeats and they were quite heavy.
03:33So, probably like having, I think, really getting an understanding of what they want
03:40and what they wanted out of the season.
03:42You know, like I said, that was a part of my transition as well, but as well as theirs.
03:45And we sat down, we did quite a lot of feedback sessions.
03:49A lot of them laughed, they thought it was hilarious.
03:51We had an intern from Bangor Uni come and do some psychology sessions
03:55and quite a lot of it was quite jovial, but it got out what they wanted from their
04:00from their playing careers, I suppose, and what they saw it as.
04:04And I think that was quite important for us as a stepping stone to go forward
04:10from having that experience of it being quite a negative environment.
04:14You know, they'd still commit, but they'd lose and perhaps people would then drop off
04:17or there was backlash from the losses.
04:21And that can always get a bit of a roll on.
04:23And I think to start the season fresh with potentially a bit more realistic aims
04:29and targets of what the players actually wanted, not what the club wanted,
04:34just helped create that kind of honest environment.
04:36And I think that honesty between us where we could quite comfortably challenge each other.
04:40You know, there was always going to be a few in the room that want to win the league
04:44and get promoted.
04:45And then there's a few that, you know, I should say that the guys you're on in the room,
04:49if you like, you don't really mind because they just rock up to chuck a ball around
04:52for 80 minutes on a Saturday.
04:54So it's very much a balance of what those guys wanted.
04:58And I think that helped create that kind of environment that we could have
05:01those open, honest conversations.
05:02Like, can we realistically make top six was the chat that we had.
05:08You know, you talk a lot about retaining and engaging players.
05:11We had, I think I did a check and there was about 78 registered players.
05:18Okay.
05:19And realistically, we had about 23.
05:24So the club perception, if you like, so the higher, you know, the club committee,
05:29if you'd like, thought that we were blessed with the number of players that we had.
05:34But, you know, the reality was very, very different.
05:36And, you know, 23 aren't always available.
05:40Someone's working, someone's on holiday.
05:42The dreaded statue is a killer.
05:45Sorry to interrupt, but how do you cope with that?
05:48And what techniques do you use to try and deal with that, you know,
05:53regularity of training, you know, the availability of those players?
05:56Is there anything that you've done that other coaches could learn from?
06:01I think it's a bit of my naivety.
06:03Like I said, when I came in, I thought that everyone would want to go training.
06:07I thought everybody would want to play.
06:09And I thought they'd all be there.
06:12But, you know, unfortunately, that's not real life.
06:14You know, the guys have other commitments.
06:16And I wanted to put in a sort of a, if you don't train, you don't play policy.
06:21Yeah.
06:23Because they'd really struggled with that for the seasons before.
06:26And where we are geographically, a lot of our younger players go away to university.
06:32Yeah.
06:33And then they come back.
06:34And basically, it was like one of those scenarios where they'd get a starting jersey
06:38over someone that was coming on a Thursday.
06:41And it's that balance between, yes, you want to keep that bond with a player
06:45that's going away.
06:46But equally, you've got to reward the guy who's sacrificing his Thursday night
06:49or his Wednesday night.
06:50So it was very much, you know, I think I'd seen it as,
06:54if you don't come to training, you don't play.
06:56But within the first probably three or four months,
06:58I realised that wasn't going to be an option for us.
07:00And it was about rewarding.
07:03I'd probably say we had a corp, maybe eight or nine players that ultimately
07:07we ended up building a team around because we knew that they were reliable
07:11and they wanted to come.
07:12And that was part of the plan, I suppose, is to try and keep a,
07:17like a bit cheesy, but like keep a backbone of a side that stays the same
07:21and then keep dropping those other players in.
07:24You know, we're probably lucky to have that number of youth,
07:29you know, ex-youth players that have gone to university who want to come back
07:32to the club, which is huge.
07:33You know, you can't, you can't put a value on that,
07:36that they want to stay at the club.
07:38But it's about picking those battles really and seeing if there's maybe
07:42second team games that they can drop into.
07:45If there's games throughout the season where we can target that,
07:48we can keep them filtered in.
07:50Just to keep that club buying, I suppose,
07:54with those was pretty important as well.
07:56Who did you involve in the process of sitting down and talking around your
07:59vision for the season, the environment you wanted to create?
08:03Was that very coach led or who did you involve in that process?
08:09Yeah, I think, I think probably the first season,
08:13I was probably a little bit player orientated.
08:16So I put a lot of it on them.
08:20And as I said, like it was,
08:21it was difficult at that time because we probably didn't have the level of
08:24buy-in or the level of commitment. So it's a bit of a yin and yang.
08:28I can't say it didn't work because I put it on the players because had we had
08:32the players buy-in, you know, it's one of those things,
08:34but by second season we had that core.
08:39So it was a lot, a lot, probably more structured and less fragile.
08:43And then we had them as a bit of a leadership or team group,
08:48if you like, that we could bounce ideas off.
08:50And I was quite keen on the idea of everyone having a bit of,
08:54I don't like like hierarchy stuff,
08:57like a cheesy kind of circle and everything's a bit fluffy and woolly.
09:01Like that'd be the ideal world I live in. I know that doesn't always work,
09:05but we wanted things like the youth set up to be,
09:09and the senior set up and almost probably the under 16s and under 15s coaches
09:17to all have an understanding of where we wanted to go as a team.
09:23So like the initial conversations were probably a group of that.
09:26So 15s, 16s, youth, senior coaches and a group of senior players.
09:36You know, the one question I love to ask, how did you measure success?
09:40You know, and did you have any checkpoints throughout the season, really,
09:44to know that you were on track as a coaching group or as a playing group?
09:49Yeah, I normally, I think because we'd sat down and had expectations of where we were.
09:56I mean, I can't underestimate, I suppose,
10:00like how fragile the club was when I took it on.
10:03Like there was probably a pretty high chance of them folding that season
10:07and not being able to commit.
10:09I mean, they'd gone away the season before with like 12 players and stuff like that.
10:13So it wasn't, you know, it wasn't a solid foundation to put anyone forward
10:20through from a youth team or anything like that.
10:22So the success was much more probably off pitch than on.
10:27If I'm brutal, it was probably a bit more about creating that environment
10:32that the youth would want to play in the seniors
10:34and that there would be a senior team available for them at that time.
10:39We had a lot of conversations around should we run a second team
10:42or could we run a second team?
10:43And I guess probably next year's success would be if we can run a second team
10:49at the same time.
10:51You know, we weren't able to do it this year.
10:53And I think we probably jumped the gun a bit this year.
10:56But I think there's an appetite building now that we can make that
10:59into next year's success.
11:00But it was really the coaching and the management structure behind the scenes,
11:07if you like, that was probably the bigger one to tick off.
11:11And then it sounds cheesy, but like I had to get top six this season.
11:20And I think that was, you know, it was realistic.
11:23I think where the season's finished, we're currently fourth.
11:26So, you know, that's a tick in the box for them,
11:30and they'll see that as a success.
11:32I think we as coaches probably look at it more like how many youth players
11:36did we get through the system?
11:37How many second team games did we have?
11:40Did we have to cancel any games?
11:41All that kind of stuff.
11:42And then my competitiveness is like how many do we win?
11:47And what are the scorelines?
11:48You know, we've gone from 88 nils to, you know, 28, 26,
11:55and those kind of games.
11:56And those are the games the boys need to play, really, to get any better.
11:59So there's been lots of successes, although they probably, you know,
12:04probably might not be seen for another three or four years.
12:07Yeah.
12:08You know, you talk about the successes there,
12:10and you seem to have a lot of them in a short space of time.
12:13Is there any things that hadn't worked?
12:15And how did you problem solve them?
12:19Yeah, I think probably, like I said, my naivety at the start of it.
12:22I came in and I just thought we'd run it like a professional environment.
12:29That was my take on it.
12:30And, you know, we could rewrite a playbook.
12:34We could get people fitter, faster, better skills,
12:39have loads of different set plays, you know, like reinvent the line out,
12:43all this kind of stuff.
12:44And it ended up being much more about simplifying everything,
12:49not complicating everything.
12:50And we just, I guess,
12:54probably tried to impose a lot of the ideas in the first year.
13:03So it's like from a coach down.
13:06Probably the best successes came out of the feedback and the review of year one
13:11going into year two is when, like,
13:14that honesty we'd managed to have with each other was that, like,
13:17basically our catch pass and our core skills just weren't good enough.
13:21So, you know, for the players to be able to say that
13:25and then the sessions to change to focus on those,
13:27you've kind of automatically got a bit of buy-in.
13:29So that helped massively.
13:32But I think, you know, if I say anything,
13:36I probably overplanned in the year one.
13:40I do like split the season into two kind of thing,
13:47but look at the whole season before any of it starts
13:49and put in loads of different things I wanted to pick off.
13:53But the truth was really,
13:55I couldn't move on to the next thing without finishing one.
13:58So just having that, I guess,
14:02a framework or a basic planning structure of where I wanted the season to go
14:07and then having the flexibility within those sessions to change it,
14:10to see where we were.
14:13And I think probably the biggest learning I had was that the guys,
14:17you know, particularly like they're a great group of lads
14:20and they just want to be mates and have fun on a Saturday.
14:25Like, you know, I'm really grateful for them
14:29because they probably put a little bit of that back into me,
14:31which had probably gone.
14:32So I think just kind of remembering why everyone was there really.
14:36And that's probably been the biggest learning.
14:39Have you felt that the relationship between a player and a coach
14:44needs to be strong to have that success on and off the field?
14:49I think so.
14:50I think I said like the commitment thing was difficult for me
14:56in the first year because of work commitments
14:59and just generally like still trying to hang on to my playing career
15:04and random little things I was doing meant that I wasn't always there.
15:09I think sometimes if you're away from the environment
15:12and you come in and maybe a combination of that
15:14and me trying to impose things, it wasn't right.
15:17And I think I had to get a much better relationship with them,
15:22understand what they wanted and sort of show them
15:26the level of commitment that they were putting in was being mirrored by me.
15:29And I think that probably helped us quite a lot.
15:31I mean, I can't fault the guys for being accepting of me as a woman.
15:36You know, I think I'm probably a little bit luckier in that situation.
15:41You know, Covent Bay is a club I grew up with.
15:43So I haven't had to go in there cold, if you like.
15:46It's somewhere I know and obviously people know me
15:49because of the club attachment.
15:51So that's been quite easy.
15:53But I think, you know, they probably weren't ready
15:59for the level of intensity or structure I was trying to impose on them.
16:04And I think that's probably one thing.
16:06Like I said, like getting that understanding
16:08of what they actually wanted out of it was pretty key.
16:11Do you think you're a better coach for being out at that level?
16:15Yeah, I think so.
16:16Like I've been really lucky.
16:18Like I mentioned, like working with the Welsh Rugby Union before,
16:21I've had quite a mix of opportunities, I suppose,
16:25or experiences from, you know, mixed ability rugby
16:30that we have with the Stingrays all the way through to, you know,
16:34like experiences out in Japan where you're coaching 200 kids
16:38in a foreign language and all those kind of different things chucked at you.
16:41And I think that's probably a little bit about that planning comment before.
16:46You know, sometimes you can go in so structured
16:48and you want one thing out of a session,
16:50but you might miss like 100 other different things.
16:52And I think it's about seeing what's in front of you sometimes.
16:56And if you're seeing something different
16:58or you can identify something different,
17:00then it's okay to change what you had in mind.
17:03Do you know what I mean?
17:04As long as you're staying on the right track,
17:06I think that flexibility and that sort of ability to adapt
17:10and think on your feet is really important.
17:12And I think coaches probably like, and how I started,
17:16I wanted to hold on to what I wanted to do so tightly
17:19that I didn't want to change from it.
17:20And I think that's probably where being in community rugby
17:24has made me realise that that's not what happens on a Wednesday or Saturday.
17:29So, yeah, you've got to adapt
17:32and get used to playing your eight at fly off if you have to.
17:37Just to finish off really, a lot of community coaches now
17:40will be thinking about the season coming ahead.
17:42How would you summarise and give some key points and takeaways really
17:47to think around player retention
17:50and the engagement of that player within the club?
17:52So, summarise the discussion that we had really.
17:56Yeah, I think for me probably,
18:00like if I was looking ahead of this season coming now,
18:05all being well, you'd like to do some kind of review.
18:08So you have a bit of an idea of what worked well.
18:11And for me, that would have to work with that coaching group
18:14and that management group and obviously players,
18:16players involvement in that as well.
18:18And then it's really taking it forward.
18:20So what you'd see as key wins, I suppose, for you as a coach,
18:24but as a club and as a team.
18:26So if I use Covent Bay as an example, like I said,
18:29as being able to maybe have four second team games
18:32in the first season, six second team games in year two,
18:36maybe we enter a second team league as year three.
18:39And it's a bit of having, for me, that long-term plan.
18:43But I think it's really important that you don't get too carried away
18:46with what happens on the pitch at community level.
18:48I think you've got to look after the players.
18:51I think for me, one learning is that they give an awful lot
18:55of their time to the rugby club, as do the volunteers who are there.
18:58And I think you've got to respect that relationship.
19:02It's got to be symbiotic.
19:04They've got to get everything they want out of that relationship.
19:08And I think that's really important.
19:10I think having some, it sounds a bit cheesy,
19:15but having some social events booked in.
19:17We usually try and plan the calendar for those days
19:21where you could get old boys versus new guys.
19:25It might be dads versus and that kind of stuff.
19:27And you can plan those into the year so that you can make
19:30those really good events at the club.
19:32And I think if they become successful events,
19:35you get that retention back.
19:37So you might get an ex-player that sees it on Facebook or whatever
19:39and starts to see that there's a bit of appetite there.
19:42And then for the, probably the transition thing for me,
19:46it'd be trying to look at games where I can get those youth players
19:50into the senior set up.
19:51So as I said, it might not be chucking them straight
19:54into a first team game, but it might be putting them on a weekend
19:57when we can get a second team out.
19:59Or like our perfect scenario at the club,
20:02usually we're fortunate to have a couple of free pitches altogether.
20:06But if we can get a first team, a second team,
20:10and a youth team out on the same day,
20:12the atmosphere we have in the club is incredible.
20:14So all that kind of stuff is really important for me
20:19in the planning stage of things before the season starts.
20:23I suppose from a rugby perspective,
20:25I think have a look at your expectations for the season
20:29and then try and plan backwards on how you might get that.
20:34We've probably simplified and cut back as much as we can
20:39in our playbook and our set pieces and stuff like that,
20:42and just try to focus on the core skill that gets you that.
20:47So if it's a line out, it's your lift or your throw, for example,
20:51we had about 15 set plays in the backs,
20:54but it's very limited if you haven't got the core skill to execute them.
21:01So I think if you can get the player buy-in on that early,
21:04you'll see hopefully little wins as you go throughout the season.
21:09Well, thank you, Rach, for your time and your thoughts
21:13and your honesty there.
21:14I'm sure some great takeaways for the coaches to think about
21:17the season and wish you all the best for the forthcoming season.
21:22Thanks, Greg.