Professionals Playing in the Park: Some Thoughts

Some players feel stifled by the atmosphere of professional rugby – for many, it erodes the joy they took from the game as a youngster. They understand how lucky they are, of course, but relative to how they used to enjoy the game, it holds little for them. This doesn’t create good rugby players.

The answer lies in marrying the two: by reducing the amount rugby is a job and increasing the creative nature of rugby. We need to reject all the clichés of professionalism such as mentally striving for constant improvement, the body being a temple and approaching each session as another opportunity to improve and all the claptrap that follows the words, ‘you’re a professional’. All that has to be thrown off. Changes in mood and just how we feel day to day are natural and should be bowed to, not ploughed through. If you assume that pressure (I mean these external pressures – I’m all in favour of training under pressure) is bad for performance then performance (quality of play) can only be improved by throwing off those pressures mentioned above.

I’m not saying that pressure in competition isn’t sometimes healthy, of course we have to train under pressure –that’s quite different. The route to destruction is paved with those who allowed the daily pressures of professional sport to wear them down. Maybe I’m wrong, and these people are Olympic Gold Medal winners. But for me, rugby is a game, thinking of it as anything else simply invites these pressures that, for me, are nothing but self-destructive. That doesn’t mean I approach training with a wilful abandon that leads to me taking the piss or not caring when I throw a shit pass – there is something inside the vast majority of players at all levels that prevents that attitude. However, to a certain extent, a poor pass is not the end of the world, especially in training, and it is day-to-day training I’m talking about. It’s not about accepting sloppiness, that’s unacceptable, it’s about proportion.

Only when the idea of the professional’s existence being a rugby machine whose raison d’etre is to produce tackles, passes and kicks interspersed with squats and deadlifts is thrown off can creativity be allowed in.

Let us return to rugby in the park. Rugby prides itself on its cerebral element but surely we play best when it’s instinctive. So it was when we were young, we didn’t think about it. And when it was something we did 3 or 4 times a week we probably didn’t think about it, or if we did it was a case of enjoying the cerebral issues the game presents, but crucially as an antidote to the grind of daily life. Rugby was a glorious escape! When rugby becomes the norm, it becomes mundane and this becomes very difficult to reverse. So the challenge remains of trying to turn everyday training into a game in the park, improving players by becoming more instinctive, to allow us this side of us out. Surely this is the aim if that’s how we want to play on a Saturday afternoon.

I think some professional structures are damaging to players and performance. Professionalism has brought us the opportunity to train more, but that must not be abused. We have to train smart. It has to remain fun, like a match. If the phrase, ‘play as we train, train as we play’ is something to live by, and it should be, then let’s train instinctively and not by numbers.

We surely have to recognise what sport is to our psyche: a game with direct associations with childhood. What I earlier called the clichés of professionalism should be forgotten, for they are detrimental to our performance on a Saturday afternoon. As an approach, it isn’t weak, it isn’t wishy-washy and it doesn’t sacrifice hard work as a central tenet. It prioritises empowering players with the freedom (and responsibility) to play and training them in such a way that their brains and movements become more, not less, instinctive.