Recalibrated coach gets more hands-on
MELBOURNE Rebels coach Dave Wessels has done a 180degree turn in his coaching for season 2020 after another failed campaign last year left him questioning his position.
A barnstorming start to 2019, which included six wins in the opening eight games, finished with a whimper as the Rebels again failed to make the Super Rugby finals – a feat the 10-year-old club is yet to achieve.
Wessels said he was “not a good guy to be around” as he and his team lost focus.
It wasn’t until he stepped back when the season ended that Wessels realised not only what had gone wrong, but all the reasons for it, which he saw as an opportunity for change.
Having “recalibrated” his coaching style and stocked his playing list with more experience, Wessells is confident the Rebels are on the right path ahead of tomorrow’s clash against the Sunwolves.
“I wasn’t enjoying myself at the end of last season and I probably had a couple of moments where I wondered if this is what I wanted to be doing,” Wessels said from Japan.
“We wanted to succeed for everyone who has put so much into the club and so our motivation wasn’t about improving. It was about trying to get an outcome, and focusing on that changed a lot of my behaviours without realising it.
“This year … I have recalibrated that and want to do the things I enjoy, the things that brought me in to coaching in the first place.
“I have taken on a more hands-on role and doing a bunch of different things so I can be more engaged with the team.”
New flyhalf Frank Lomani, Fiji’s captain, is among the players Wessels hopes will help his team reach the finals.
“Those sort of players enable us to rotate our squad and make sure we always have the freshest players on the field without a significant drop in performance, which probably wasn’t the case last year,” he said.