Leinster Rugby continues collaboration with St Mary’s University, Twickenham

Over the past three seasons Leinster Rugby have collaborated with St Mary’s University, Twickenham, drawing upon evidence-based research to develop an explicit coaching and coach development strategy that is expressed in the work of all rugby department staff.

On foot of these ongoing collaboration with St Mary’s University, Leinster Rugby are offering a bespoke professional learning program to school and club based coaches from across the Province.

The program is designed to observe, examine and improve current and future coaching practices, and will therefore be rooted in coaching best practice and backed up by acknowledged theories in coaching.  It will consist of a number of key themes delivered over three full days:

• Skill acquisition theories and methodologies
• The Coach-to-Player relationship
• Game-based coaching: to enhance player creativity, resilience, confidence and team cohesion

In addition to the specialised coaching workshops, a virtual Community of Practice (CoP) will be established to allow coaches to access and share information regarding coaching and continued professional development good practice, coaching experiences, session planning and reflections.

Each coach enrolled on the program will be allocated a mentor from the Coach Development services team to support them throughout the program requirements.

Derek Maybury, Leinster Rugby Coach Development Manager added: “Working with St Mary’s over the last three years has been a fantastic opportunity for us.  We’ve learned to develop our coaching and coach development programs around accepted, evidence-based theories more than on personal coaching experience alone. Our main shift in focus has been from what the coach teaches to what the players learn, highlighting learning in context and increased player problem solving. We’re really excited about sharing this philosophy coaches across the Province this coming season.”

Click here for more information and to download the flyer.

To book a place, click here.

Workshops take place as below:

Members of the Coach Development services team are just back from Brussels where they presented the first of these specialised professional learning workshops for coaches of Royal Kituro RFC.

Coach Development Manager, Derek Maybury, along with Coach Development Officers Colin O’Hare, Dan van Zyl and Damien McCabe introduced the program to coaches from across the Club’s age-grade teams. This was followed by a full day working with the coaches and their players.

The workshop was met with such positive feedback that they have been invited back to present the second and third workshops in October and January respectively.