Fate And Opportunity

The Most Difficult Hurdles in Rugby Player Development to Mitigate…maybe?

Due to a family illness, I have been spending a lot of time on planes and in airport departures simply thinking about life. In between people watching, I recently hit upon the thought of how on earth did I get to this point in my life? Could I have made different choices or explored different opportunities in life where I could have chosen a different path. Of course, this multi-versal thinking is mind-bending and often sees one resigning oneself to the reality that this is your life, and you must live it as best as you can as you have joys in your current reality that may not have occurred if you had choose that different ‘sliding doors’ path all those years ago.

However, on my last trip, I ended up walking along a boardwalk and this popped into my head – ‘As a coach, what are the ‘unseen’ hurdles for my players that I needed to mitigate against to bring each player their version of success?’

After much time in my own head and reviewing my time over 30 years as a rugby coach and as a doctoral student looking at coaching as a career, the conclusion I came to was one I wasn’t expecting but now I sit here writing, makes perfect sense.

The unseen hurdles were, fate, luck and opportunity. 

As an older rugby coach, Christmas and birthdays brings with them presents not of socks and deodorant, as would be the expected norm for a father, but the wrapped delights of autobiographies from famous athletes and coaches. Some are a simple case of ‘I did this’ followed by ‘I then did this’ and so on. There is also the selling point of them saying something controversial that gets them into the Daily Mail as clickbait, but the better musings are ones that genuinely say something about their sport. These are rare indeed. However, the one common denominator many autobiographies possess is ‘the moment’ – that nexus in time when things changed for them and their future.

In all autobiographies, there is that moment where the author gets to the ‘…and then I met X’ or ‘…that was when I first met Y’ part of their journey. Until this point, the lives of these athletes is almost a mirror image of every child / young adult experience in the world where they played in the back garden, they played at a club, had dreams of playing for their country which makes them no different to any sports loving child. The intervention of a secondary figure of influence in this person’s life however, changes the story. 

‘It was at this point I met X’ is probably the most common line in most sporting autobiographies.

Meeting the right coach at the right time isn’t often seen as a normal occurrence at all – I mean, it is often seen as an unusual occurrence that could not have happened to any one of their peers. If it was a normal thing, meeting the right coach at the right time, why would these now famous athletes mention that meeting at all? For many athletes, looking back on their careers, is this ‘moment’, that they see as consequential, was just dumb luck or was it part of a pre-determined plan by a national governing body? We would hope it was a planned occurrence but what makes the athlete believe that this wasn’t something normal, natural and an event worthy of highlighting in their autobiography? Surely the athlete, upon reflection would see that there was no such thing as fate or luck, and it was in fact a designed plan? Maybe it’s their unique insight into the reality of their own sports coaching structures over many years allows them a realisation that with all the ability in the world, with access to the finest coaches and opportunities afforded them, they have a strong realisation that it might not have happened at all if luck and happenstance didn’t have a huge amount to play in the recruitment and development of elite players – even today.

Moving forward from the first intervention by this mystical figure, the next occurrence is usually ‘…and off I went to a trial and was selected…’ but even this is a massively simplistic and misunderstood comment. Often, the support that allowed them to get to this point is left out or dismissed by the ghost writer as uninteresting. Clearly the athlete had some talent (of course they do) but there are 100 other questions that should be answered if we are to understand the truth of the modern athletes journey.

What were their current playing experiences and how they got to that trial in the first place in an interesting place to start. For example,

-       how did they hear about the local club they played for prior to the trial?

-       what was it that drew them to that club?

-       was it local or did their guardians seek out the best club locally?

-       what was the standard of play at the club when they got there?

-       who were their teammates – local or drawn in from a wide local area?

-       did their team win all the time,

-       what were the coaching staff like as people and their personal playing experiences?

-       Was the player dedicated to a single sport at this stage, or did they have the time to experience other sports?

Upon reaching the trial, then comes the next set of thoughts.

-       The coaches at that players club/school would have needed to be sent the communication of the date of the trial,

-       the coach/teacher would have needed to be diligent enough to pass that along to the child/parents – this doesn’t always happen due to all kinds of mix-ups,

-       they would have had to have parents of means if the trial was somewhat distant to their home,

-       at the trial itself, would they have been placed in a group that were able to allow the player to show his best side at the trial (is the 9 throwing the ball to 10 going to be good enough to allow the 10 to shine and so on),

-       do the viewing coaches have an open mind to seek the best players as opposed to choosing from previously trends (‘a player from this club/school is always good’). They are often dedicated, well-meaning amateurs and not fully paid professional assessors – again, this is more common than you think.

I remember once watching a U13s trial and after a mid-morning break, my son, who was ten at the time, asked me why all the big players were in that group and the smaller ones were in another group. I looked closer as my first instinct was there is a split between forwards and backs…there was not. There was a weighting made at this trial for size and early maturation which made me feel a little uneasy. I mean, I didn't realise that I also had to coach 'big' now. As an aside, one unselected player at that trial was a very small scrum half who many years later went on to play a very high standard of rugby in Irelands A.I.L.  and was looked at by Ulster but even here, that opportunity came to him when he moved countries to live with his father where he had a link with that club – happenstance?

So, my next question was how does the late developer come to be seen?

At that time, there was no ‘second entry trial’ made a year down the line and while those early developers were getting high quality coaching sessions every week alongside their club training sessions, the club coaches would find it difficult to help a late developer make an impact at any later date as the standard required for late immersions was now significantly higher than at the original trial (one would hope).

Going back to the trial, the players who were successful at the trial now have a pre-eminent position within their club team as they are often making real impacts in their match play due to their extra coaching from the development program. Club coaches place these select, additionally coached few, in positions of responsibility and influence in their teams pattern of play because, well, why wouldn’t you. So, a decision made when the players were aged 12 or 13 often led them to have coaching within a talented peer group with specialist coaching staff in a development program that led them to recognised as a player with potential further down the line.

I am happy to report that development programs at grass roots level in rugby union have improved somewhat and development coaches do now come to see club teams play to ensure they haven’t missed anyone - a significant step forward from even five years ago.

Of course, any early success with fate and opportunity falling in your favour is no guarantee of future success and the world is full of people who came late to the game and ‘made it’ or were discovered in university later in life but the influence of fickle finger of fate, allied to opportunity afforded, is often a misunderstood hurdle in the process of finding the very best athletes. Often, that is the real battle that needs to be addressed in key moments of a young athletes life.

Many years ago, I recall a colleague of mine saying he had found the next big thing in scrummaging, but he couldn’t get him to attend training regularly. On the surface, this is a simple exercise in lack of commitment and a red flag for many coaches and programs. However, as a diligent coach, he went to this player’s home and asked him what was going on. He told him that if he could get home from school, eat some food and catch a bus at a particular time, he would avoid having to change buses in a certain area of the city…where gang members from that area would have a chance to attack him. Coming home however, he had to wait ten minutes for the change at an open bus stop. Great talent but opportunity was harder for him to access.

How many more stories like this do we not know about? Scarily, I suspect all coaches have stories like this.

How we minimise the influence of fate, opportunity, happenstance, luck or whatever you wish to call it in our selection processes may well determine whether we find the truly best athletes in our sport. Recruitment and development models / pathways may need to be more open to adjustment than we currently allow them to be, but need the will to ensure that we truly create an opportunity for all to succeed.

What does success look like? Of course some players are more talented than others or have genetic abilities that aid their success with many simply 'wanting it' more than others, that's okay but the next time we look at our best athletes, maybe a little research into their background would allow us all to realise that this superior athlete, with the skills we all applaud, was once one sliding doors moment away from doing something very different in life if there wasn't that 'moment'.

Can we mitigate for fate and opportunity as coaches?

Ask me after a few more airport departure coffees....I may have some thoughts.