Game overload
As World Rugby looks into the future structure of the sport, there is a lot to be said for the idea of building breaks into the season
One line from Warren Gatland during his press conference piqued my interest, discussing how his time with the British and Irish Lions had benefited him mentally. “That time away was good for me and it refreshed me,” Gatland said. “If I had not had that change of environment, I do not think I would have been here [with Wales] for as long.”
I appreciated what he said immediately, because I previously felt the same.
In a professional sport sometimes you need to be doing other things, to have different challenges. When I was first coaching Scotland before the game went professional, some of my best ideas came when I was teaching and writing on a blackboard, not thinking about rugby.
Sometimes you need that ability to go away and do something else. With Warren, the Lions was a completely different challenge. There is a mental freshness to what you are doing. With the Lions in 1997, when the game had been professional for two years, I had Northampton chairman Keith Barwell to thank. He gave me the time off to prepare for the Lions and it put me in a completely different mental state. I was still coaching, but if I needed any time for Lions business they just gave me the time off. It did not help Northampton whatsoever and, actually after the 1997 tour when I was approached to coach England, one of the main reasons I felt I could not do it was because I owed Northampton and Barwell in particular a huge thank you. I had a debt to repay and it would have been wrong to walk away.
It was the same in 2009 when I had a year’s sabbatical from Wasps, having won the Premiership the previous year. I had a fantastic staff and a fantastic chairman in Chris Wright. The time allowed me to look at what I wanted to do with the Lions on that tour in a very open and refreshing away.
In 1997, I had been able to go to South Africa in the previous summer. I put together a 20-page report on the type of players I was looking for and how to beat South Africa at the time. Your planning and preparation for a Lions tour has to be spot on to have detail and clarity, which come from having the time available to go through all the alternatives and make good choices.
As Warren experienced, that time away with the Lions gives you a little bit of independence, and we need to look hard at creating similar opportunities for players.
When I was at Northampton and Wasps, I wanted young players to be taking on education or university courses as well as their training. It is unhealthy for a player to have rugby as his sole purpose. Certainly now, 23 years into the professional game, mental health has become more important as the demands of the game have become greater.
Brett Gosper, World Rugby chairman, this month said: “There’s a growing belief less [games] may be more.” World Rugby’s committee meetings are taking place in Sydney this week, with discussions going on about how the game might look. International players are not the only ones under pressure – all professional players are, because of the number of games they play. That figure has risen because the game has been phenomenally successful, advancing, both on and off the field, faster than anyone anticipated, considering it turned professional in 1995 with no thought or preparation whatsoever.
The mental freshness element has been highlighted more and more by players after they have suffered injuries. Dylan Hartley is desperate to be involved with England again having had a mental refresh, given he missed this summer’s tour of South Africa with concussion. Admittedly it was an enforced absence, but it shows how beneficial those breaks can be. “I’ll carry the kit, scrub the boots and do anything to be involved,” he said.
Joe Marler’s international retirement this week is another example of that.
The demands of the game now are huge on your family. Twenty-three years into the professional game, I feel we are overdue for a top-to-bottom review to work out how we look after the game’s biggest assets: the players.
For Marler to make that call illustrates the mental and emotional pressures that come with playing. Players are absorbing a huge depth of knowledge and information the whole time, and they then have to go out and execute that properly.
One of the biggest lessons I learnt while coaching was to “coach smarter, not longer”. That is the coaching challenge, and it is that which takes a coach’s time. Clarity is so important for consistent and best performances.
When I was at Wasps, we used to have physical breaks every six weeks, a week off or a number of days off, and I think ultimately the ideal professional season will look at breaks during which the players can step back slightly.
We should still encourage players to be doing things other than rugby: studying for degrees, two afternoons a week in a business, something else to make them think differently during a working week and help them prepare for life after rugby.
You want your best players to keep going until they are 32 to 33, not retiring at 28. This period with the World Rugby’s meetings in Sydney represents the best opportunity to work out how the professional game should look moving forward.
‘You want players to keep going until they are 32 to 33, not retiring at 28’