women's rugby

This week, Eamonn is away so Jess is joined by Andy Stevens. They chat about how they support and challenge each other's coaching. 

Sarah and Charley from Huddersfield RUFC women's team chat about training and the World Cup and Jess learns about the Utrecht Shield which tracks women's rugby history.

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Also, tap into the library of 4,000 pages of activities, advice, tactics and tips to help you become the best rugby coach you can be!

Ali Donnelly is Executive Director of Digital, Marketing and Communications at Sport England.  

She is a former Senior Civil Servant, who worked at Downing Street where she was the Prime Minister's Deputy Official Spokesperson and the Head of News.

Ali was previously Head of Communications at Premiership Rugby club Wasps and has also worked in media and public affairs roles at the BBC have started her career as a journalist at the Evening Echo newspaper in Ireland. 

A passionate women's rugby fan and campaigner Ali also runs the award-winning website Scrumqueens and is Director of Women's Rugby at Teddington and a member of the RFU’s Rugby Growth Committee. Her new book is called:  'Scrum Queens - The History of Women's Rugby'. 

Along with exploring Ali’s career pathway in sport and business, we review the current state of play for women’s rugby and the potential with 2025 World Cup on the horizon in England. What more needs to change for equality in women’s sport and to ensure young women don’t stop being active in their teenage age years?

Thanks to Sport England who support The Game Changers through the National Lottery.

Thank you to Sport England who support The Game Changers Podcast with a National Lottery award.

Find out more about The Game Changers podcast here: https://www.fearlesswomen.co.uk/thegamechangers

Hosted by Sue Anstiss
Produced by Sam Walker, What Goes On Media

A Fearless Women production

Bird and LJ caught with Rachel Lund, former England international and now a Gloucester-Hartpury player who is studying to become a physio.

They asked her about the following:

• Her journey from minis player to premiership.
• Combining and juggling her commitments as an international and club player whilst studying full time for a degree.
• Whether she would have changed to a full-time contract if she had been offered it.
• The importance of having many career options.
• Her current degree in physiotherapy.
• How her degree combines with her sport.

Rachel began playing for Malton & Norton RUFC in North Yorkshire when she was 6 years old.

In 2013 she began studying Sports Therapy at the University of Worcester and began playing for Worcester Ladies in the Premiership.

In the 2014-15 season, she played for the England U20s at full back. Later that year she was capped by England Seniors whilst on tour in Canada in 2015 and was an EPS player for the 2015-16 season.

Following her studies she began a full time Academy Sports Therapy role at Hartpury College, and in this role, moved from Worcester Ladies to sign for Gloucester-Hartpury in 2017.

She has recently begun a masters in Physiotherapy and plans to play alongside her degree at Gloucester-Hartpury.

To find out more about this podcast and many others, go to Rugby Coach Weekly

Also, tap into the library of 4,000 pages of activities, advice, tactics and tips to help you become the best rugby coach you can be!

Liza “Bird” Burgess and LJ Lewis discuss a round of questions about the practicalities of the game. In this episode, they are with Kim Oliver.

Kim is currently in her fourth season as head coach at Premiership team Bristol Women's team. She won 43 caps for England as a centre, worked as a community coach with Bath and spent two years in Gibraltar as a rugby development officer.

In the podcast, they covered the following topics:

• What have been your biggest lesson you have learnt, transitioning from player to coach?
• How would you introduce your defence philosophy/structure to your players? As the season progresses how would you measure the success of your philosophy/structure?
• How would you build confidence in a player around tackle/collision skills?
• What ideas do you have on structuring your training session, to ensure you cover your attack and defence philosophies? E.g. how you use your coaching team, defence/attack is coached at the same time, games/drills/skill isolation.
• What does a successful defence look like?

To find out more about this podcast and many others, go to Rugby Coach Weekly

Also, tap into the library of 4,000 pages of activities, advice, tactics and tips to help you become the best rugby coach you can be!

Liza Bird Burgess and LJ Lewis discuss a round of questions about the practicalities of the game. In this episode, they are with Tania Rosser. 

Tania won more than 50 caps for Ireland, is a level 4 coach, plus played international netball and touch rugby. New Zealand born, she featured in three world cups for Ireland. She currently coaches the Clontarf J1 men's team, balancing that with working as a primary school teacher.

• Having played and coached representative sport in netball, touch rugby and rugby union, what benefits has this experience across a range of sports provided you with when coaching rugby? 
• How important is it for coaches to keep updated with developments in other sports?
• Drills v games: the best balance when coaching.
• Playbooks: what are the pros and cons.
• How do you manage motivation when working with players?

To find out more about this podcast and many others, go to Rugby Coach Weekly

Also, tap into the library of 4,000 pages of activities, advice, tactics and tips to help you become the best rugby coach you can be!

Liza Bird Burgess and LJ Lewis discuss a round of questions about the practicalities of the game.

In this episode they are with former Ireland international Sophie Spence, who is now coaching Penclawdd mens team.

Here are the topics they cover:
Making contact training realistic: The role of equipment, when and where, bone on bone and mindset.
Tackle training v D systems: Planning how and when to use equipment, coaching technique and introducing systems in D. Planning to build and cover detail against technique and trust/communication.
Ending a session before game day:  Poor team run v good team run, how to overcome this, reinforcing game plan, not speaking for too long and bringing players together with a huddle, chant and ownership of the process.
Telling a player they are dropped: Difficult conversions as a coach, importance of being clear with selection policy, keeping feedback precise and achievable, sharing with rest of coaching team so that single message from all coaches, sticking with it as a coaching team and chatted through various options for feedback depending on time with players. Face to face, phone call, email, zoom?

To find out more about this podcast and many others, go to Rugby Coach Weekly

Also, tap into the library of 4,000 pages of activities, advice, tactics and tips to help you become the best rugby coach you can be!