Introducing children to rugby: elite coaches’ perspectives on positive player development

Abstract

The overall aim of the study was to identify what elite coaches believed were the key components for organised rugby union participation during childhood (7–11 years old). Nine elite male rugby union coaches participated in individual semi-structured interviews. Thematic analysis identified the importance of an age-appropriate competitive games pathway, where more specialised skills were built sequentially on top of the foundations of basic evasion, handling and tackling skills. The findings were generally supportive of the principles of the developmental model of sports participation (DMSP). In particular, elite coaches identified that an emphasis on less-structured games (deliberate play) and early diversification (sampling) were beneficial for player development in the mini rugby years (under 12). However, contrary to a strict interpretation of the DMSP, the coaches also identified that appropriate adult involvement and organised competition could be beneficial to development in these sampling years.

Keywords:

• skill acquisition
• deliberate play
• early diversification
• rugby
• competition

Acknowledgements

This research was part of the ‘Shaping the Game’ project initiated by the RFU and funded via an ESRC CASE Studentship for the first author. The authors would like to thank the participants for their involvement in the study and the two blind reviewers for their insightful comments that helped shape this manuscript.

Notes

This research was funded by a CASE studentship from the ESRC’s Capacity Building Cluster in Sport, Leisure and Tourism, based at the University of Exeter (RES-187-24-0002), in partnership with the Rugby Football Union. The authors thank Gary Townsend (RFU) for facilitating the introduction to potential participants and Dr. Brett Smith for comments on an earlier version of this manuscript.