How the Red Arrows and rugby calls made Lincoln giantkillers
IWAS bowled over at meeting Lincoln manager Danny Cowley and his assistant, younger brother Nicky, this week.
How they made time for me in this week of all weeks I’ll never know. I love my football and it was one of the great experiences I have had in sport.
These guys are workaholics who tackle everything with 100 per cent dedication and attention to detail — but they also possess the ability to stand back and see the bigger picture.
What captured my imagination was their teaching background. Until recently they were fulltime teachers at Fitz Wimarc School in Rayleigh, Essex.
The brothers have blended a love of teaching with a passion for sport, then built on this with old-fashioned people skills and hard graft. They love football but also athletics, basketball, rugby.
Up to 100 boys and girls used to turn up for voluntary fitness training with them at Fitz Wi marc at 7.30am every Tuesday and Thursday. Wow.
I have long maintained that the secret to being a good football or rugby manager must start with your ability to be a good coach.
Coaching is all about having the ability to impart knowledge, to communicate in a simple and inspiring fashion. In other words: to be a good teacher.
I took my sport science degree at Loughborough University. That experience underpinned everything I achieved in coaching. Five members of my coaching team at the 2003 Rugby World Cup were also ex-teachers.
Danny’s wife, former international heptathlete Kate Brewington, is also a teacher who is familiar with cuttingedge athletics routines. The brothers don’t hesitate to pick the brains of anyone they feel has something worthwhile to say.
Incredibly, in almost two hours in their company, the brothers didn’t mention Arsenal once! Their complete focus was on getting a win at Braintree on Tuesday, which they duly did.
Who knows how it will go against Arsenal today? Whatever happens, the Cowleys are already winners. They are grounded guys who are still at the foot of the ladder in football terms. They’ve already achieved very significant things in football and I expect them to achieve even more.
Here are the key areas we discussed. And there are lessons for football — and all sports — at the highest level.
1 GOOD HABITS
GREAT players and inspirational captains don’t automatically make great managers and coaches.
You must give yourself the chance to learn and make mistakes down the ladder. If the likes of Frank Lampard or Steven Gerrard took that route, they would be much better prepared for what lies ahead.
If I were to create a blueprint for developing coaches it would look a lot like the Cowleys.
Teams such as Concord, Braintree and Lincoln — three clubs they have managed — are where you really learn to run a team and earn your stripes. And understanding the teaching process is where you learn to organise, communicate and transfer knowledge.
Nicky says: ‘ In teaching, the best teacher doesn’t always make the best manager or headmaster. It probably applies to medicine and other things.’
Danny adds: ‘Teaching is a responsible, pressurised job.
‘I would never let football take over my school duties. Children only get one education and that’s your responsibility. As a teacher you learn good practice, how to communicate and nurture those of different abilities and temperament. You have to organise classes and countless training sessions in a day. Then I was at Concord or Braintree most evenings. As a teacher I’d leave the house at 6.30am when Nicky picked me up and I would never be home much before midnight.
‘You have to box things off. Time allocation is everything.
‘You automatically adopt good habits. In my PE department I insisted that all the teachers put back all the equipment as they found it, so it’s ready to use for the next class.
‘It’s common sense but it would be chaos otherwise. And sweeping out your changing room home and away after every game and session. Why wouldn’t you? The All Blacks do it.’
All this is so true. Athletes only have one career and the coach has a big responsibility.
Players are hugely driven but have different personalities and learning abilities. I’ve found it quite uncomfortable to watch great English sportsmen, leaders with excellent tactical brains like Martin Johnson and Gary Neville,
get burnt and step away from coaching and managerial roles because they were fast-tracked and not properly prepared. As a coach you start at zero regardless of your playing accomplishments.
2 TECHNOLOGY — BE A MASTER NOT A SLAVE
I LIKE to think I was cutting edge in terms of using technology and data but the key for the coach is to translate that into plain English and relate it to matchday situations. If you understand the data then you will be able to relay it to your players.
The two brothers are totally on top of this. They splice up match footage into 29 different categories — 15 attack, 14 defence — and load it all on to an app which their players can access at any time.
Meanwhile, a couple of the best sports science students at Lincoln University provide a comprehensive range of statistics which they can study and pass on.
Nicky says: ‘When we were grow- ing up we played a computer game called Championship Manager, looking at the game through numbers to support our decisions.
‘I’m always on at our goalkeeper about hitting angles on his kicking, not hitting it straight because statistically you have got much more chance of picking up a second ball if a defender can’t get a straightforward header. If the goalkeeper goes to the left of the box we want big Matt Rhead on the angle on the right-hand side.
‘We also know from statistics that Matt wins 90 per cent of aerial duels and he’s been in 600 so far this season. So you can have three offensive players feeding off that. If the players see the simple numbers they buy into it.’
Danny chips in with another example: ‘One of the most basic stats is goals-for in the first half, goals-for in the second half.
‘Lincoln finished 13th last year but would have been relegated on their second-half performances, probably because the lads weren’t fit enough. If their games started in the 46th minute and ended in the 90th they would have been relegated. That is a pretty useful stat to have up your sleeve at pre-season fitness training.
‘Stats can inform all sorts of decisions. We know categorically that we have never lost a match in which all our 11 players achieve a 60 per cent success rate in the key areas — tackles, defensive clearances, headers, pass completion, shots, crosses and so on.
‘Each individual knows that if they all hit the 60 per cent mark we will win. That’s why I don’t like making subs sometimes, it changes the dynamic.’
It was spooky listening to the guys talk like this. With England we had some stats that when I fielded my ‘Gun XV’ and we hit 90 per cent in key areas — scrums, line- outs, restarts, pass completion — we won. Every time, no exception. And, like Danny, I hate making unnecessary subs!
3 TALK A GOOD GAME
COMMUNICATION is a massive part of sport and there is so much work that can be done here. When I was at Southampton I was amazed how football tends to favour the lecture- hall environment with players sitting behind each other.
Team communication has to be on the boardroom model, so you can eyeball each other and react.
On the pitch, simplicity is key and I’m delighted to hear Lincoln have adopted rugby-style calls for all their set-pieces.
‘We have borrowed from rugby and given names to all our calls, corners and free-kicks,’ says Danny.
‘We have various calls for corners — Box, Carnage, Stack, Conquer and Nag. Because of the publicity of the Cup run everybody seems to know our corner calls now — the opposition have started calling them out to make mischief — so we’ve had to tweak them!
‘That’s what happened for our winner at Burnley which was a variation of Box, which is a move completely nicked from basketball! A lot of basketball is about man-to-man marking, denying the opposition possession, and it relates brilliantly to football.’ Nicky continues: ‘That was a “TCUP” moment for us. Thinking Correctly Under Pressure, from your book Clive! We have drilled it and the communication was good.
‘We used Matt Rhead to set a screen exactly like a big player in basketball. He sets a screen which means you send a player around the back who gets a free header.
‘Set-pieces are 30 per cent of football, they are so important.’
Working in Lincoln, Danny has talked to the Red Arrows, who are based down the road at RAF Scampton. He says: ‘They are the ultimate in elite performance and I was fascinated how they conduct their debriefing. No names, ranks or nicknames are permitted.
‘They are Red One, Red Two, Red Three. It is impersonal and objective and everybody can say what needs saying without personalities becoming involved. It is about the team performance, nothing else matters.’
4 ALWAYS THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX
SOMETIMES you have to go with instinct. When Danny and Nicky moved to Braintree, the changing room was rough and ready, to put it politely.
What happened next takes me right back to my days at Henley when I was cutting my coaching teeth. It’s about getting the environment right. I made the dressing room a priority with England when I had more resources. Actually we got a makeover TV programme to come and do it!
‘Dressing rooms are important,’ insists Danny. ‘We raised £1,000 and an army of supporters volunteered to spruce the place up. We ensured each player had their own hook and cubicle area, that the changing room was clean and warm.’
They were also concerned about a drop- off in intensity in the second half, which is something I had encountered with England.
One of the ways we tackled it was ordering a change of strip at half-time and running back out after the break in the same order as before the anthems. Why should it be any different after half-time?
Nicky tells how they had their own twist on it at Concord and Braintree: ‘Again it’s something we adapted from England rugby.
‘We weren’t in a position to have two new first-team kits but on a wet day we’d insist the players took their jerseys and shorts off and I put them in the tumble dryer! By the time the players had a shower and towelled off I’d be back with warm, dry kit. Almost as good as new, just a bit of mud.’
Genius. I must admit I ran into opposition when I tried my ploy with England but it was solved when I said the lads could keep their second England jerseys. It’s amazing how the offer of a bit of stash can sway young sportsmen!
My morning with the Cowleys was a wonderful, almost rejuvenating experience for this old coach. Good luck lads, today and in the future.