Handling vs. Weights: Let Scotland Progress

Sir Ian McGeechan writes in his book ‘Lion Man’ that rugby will only start to improve in our country if children play more sports to an older age. This multiple sport culture is ingrained in Australian society, with teenagers often playing 3 matches a week, of Union, League and footy. Of course, more diversity is needed that forms of the same game, but the point is valid. Rugby is a composite sport: you need the hand-to-hand combat skills of a wrestler, the agility of a squash player, the catching skills of a handballer, the kicking skills of a footballer and the speed and power of a 60m sprinter.

But in Scotland, the Union get involved in the development of young players so early that players are often forced to choose between sports. Pre-season now wipes out the cricket season and it takes a lot for an amateur player to fit in squash matches mid-week on top of schoolwork. Yet we are told that players need to begin weight training regimes at the age of 16 if they are to fulfil their potential. But why the need to start so young? Why should a player be conditioned so that they are able to play professional rugby at the age of 20, if it’s to the detriment of their overall skills. Why not take things slower. At the age of 16 we should be encouraging a multi-sport lifestyle. The place of the Union is not to be running weights sessions for 16 year olds. If anything, they should be running extra handling sessions so our international players end up able to score tries and exploit and recognise space and kicking sessions for kickers and throwing sessions for throwers.

Their supposed concern for the shape and size of 16 year olds should give way to a programme of injury prevention. If weights are to be begun much later, and I agree that weights are an inevitable part of the modern game, then growing bodies should be assessed and irregularities ironed out. I was stuck straight on a generic weights programme, with no regard given to the lack of flexibility in my hamstrings or my weak back.

And when we do begin conditioning players, how about making them athletic and powerful, not simply big and stodgy. Japan put our under 20 A team to the sword in April and the difference in the shape and size of each team was commented on by many spectators. The Japanese were probably lighter, but noticeably faster across the team and more athletic and rangy too.

Lifting weights is easy, any mug can do it. It involves repeating a motion ad nauseum and it does not need years of training. Drifting off a pass into space outside a defender and quickly moving the ball on is not easy, and these are the skills that must be ingrained, not the up down push in the gym. Clean and jerks can be learned later, they are not as complex as weights coaches would have you believe.

What we can all learn from Fijians

If ever I am becoming frustrated in a rugby session with either my own performance or that of those around me, or a coach, I imagine what a Fijian would do in such a situation. That is, very little. They would be chilled.

Whenever you watch players like Sireli Bobo, Rupeni Caucaunibuca, Vilimoni Delasau, Sireli Naqelevuki and the young pretender Vireimi Vakatawa, it’s a real treat.

It’s uninhibited, unprescribed, and open to your own expression. It’s an almighty lesson to all of us when worrying about learning the playbook. It isn’t individualistic, far from it. It relies on everyone being there to support the one man breakout and that cannot function if only one player buys into that (unless of course they go on to score themselves – a distinct possibility). It isn’t positional – why shouldn’t a second row be the one to break out? Who says the main job of a winger is to chase kicks? And whose idea was it to kick at all?