Dan Cottrell chats to Owen Woods, Community Rugby Coach for Gosport & Fareham RFC.
Owen was previously in the Air Force for 4½ years and then the police for 17 years. In June 2021 he started up his full-time role to promote rugby and its core values, the vision being to put the club and values at the heart of the community.
He has coached his son's rugby team for the last six years. He is a level 2 coach, a qualified referee working in schools in the local community delivering rugby sessions to children from 7 to 13. MORE
Dan chats with former Fiji captain Deacon Manu, who's now coaching in Singapore.
Deacon has traveled the rugby world, representing Fiji and the Maori All Blacks, as well as playing for Waikato Chiefs and the Blues in Super Rugby and then for the Scarlets in Wales.
They chat about the coaches he's experienced and now coaching with developing players and new players to the game. MORE
Dan chats to Jacob Ford about his remarkable journey to becoming Bury St Edmonds RFC and Ipswich School's director of rugby at the age of just 23.
The topics covered included:
The best way to speak to players to allow them to grow
What makes the players respect a coach
What efficiency in training and a game looks like
Being mentored by your dad (Mike Ford, former England and Bath coach)
The differences and similarities between coaching professional players and school players
Should bench players get paid the same as the starters
Working with players who are older than you
Developing a style of play that suits your team
Can a coach make excuses for a poor performance MORE
Dan Cottrell chats to top sports psychologist Dan Abrahams about how even non-expert coaches can make a difference in their players' mindset.
Dan Abrahams is the author of four best-selling sports psychology books and is the founder of both the Dan Abrahams Soccer Academy and The Sport Psych Show podcast. MORE
Dan hosts a discussion between Professor Rob Gray and Dr Mike Ashford about how players make decisions.
The discussion is based on a paper that Mike wrote reviewing different academic approaches to decision-making:
Understanding a Player’s Decision-Making Process in Team Sports: A Systematic Review of Empirical Evidence
https://doi.org/10.3390/sports9050065
Rob Gray suggests that the role of ecological dynamics needs to be viewed differently from the paper's conclusions. MORE
Dan speaks to Paul Gustard, now defence coach at Benetton, formerly England defence coach, Harlequins head coach and coach with Saracens.
Paul, who won two England caps and represented the Barbarians, also played for Leicester Tigers, London Irish and Saracens,
They reflect on Paul's journey to Italy and how he feels reinvigorated. MORE
Dan Cottrell chats to Mike Ford. Mike has been coaching at the top of the professional game for over twenty years, with stints at England and Ireland rugby, Saracens, as head coach at Bath, plus coaching with the British and Irish Lions and RC Toulon.
He also runs his own performance consultancy, which you can find out more about on his LinkedIn profile here.
I really enjoyed Mike's clarity, especially around how he had to convince players and stakeholders about their approach at Bath. MORE
Dan catches up with one of the most experienced coaches and coach educators in rugby, Pete Drewett.
After working with England Rugby since the early 90s, as well as coaching international age-grade (U21s), Pete went on to help build the Exeter Chiefs ready for their ascension into the top league. With stints in high-performance with Hong Kong and Georgia, plus working at the WRU, he is now a World Rugby High Performance consultant developing Kenyan rugby and their ambitions to play in the next World Cup. MORE
Dan chats with head of the Dragon Academy, Dai Rees about his coaching experiences in a long career, including Dragons Regional Coach, stints as Wales Sevens and Wales U21s coach, heading up the rugby development and high performance the Hong Kong RU, as well as working within the WRU high performance platform and most recently as head of rugby at Seaford College. MORE
