The Rugby Coach's Corner Podcast

David Walder is the current attack coach for the Newcastle Falcons in the Aviva Premiership. David played 15 years professionally in England and Japan, with the Newcastle Falcons, London Wasps and the Mitsubishi Dynaboars, including 4 full caps for England. He’s scored over 1000 points in the English premiership and is a Heineken Cup, Guinness Premiership, Powergen Cup and Tetley Bitter Cup winner. After retiring in February 2013 due to knee condition, he coached kicking at Newcastle Falcons, as well as roles at Percy Park RFC, Durham University and RGS, before being offered the team attack and backs coaching role at the Newcastle Falcons in 2014.

Richard Cheetham is a Senior Fellow in Sports Coaching at the University of Winchester where he has worked since 2005. This followed three years spent teaching and coaching in New Zealand. He has developed a strong reputation on creative thinking and innovation within coach education and development and has presented to Rugby Canada, British Cycling, Cycling Ireland, England Handball and the England Cricket Coaches Association. His research focus centres on a more holistic approach to coaching, with time spent since 2013 at Saracens RFC within the Academy programme as well as the challenges of captaincy in the English Premiership.Richard is an experienced Rugby Union Coach Educator for London South region and Hampshire RFU as well as a Tutor for Sports Coach UK on the Talent Foundation [email protected] @twowheelprof

Stephen Lewis is the Director of Rugby Operations for PRO Rugby, a professional rugby competition set to launch in the United States this year and is sanctioned by USA Rugby and World Rugby. Stephen is a World Rugby Level 3 coach and was the USA Rugby Coach of the Year in 2014. He has a long history of coaching in the US, with multiple roles at the elite level and with his club, Old Blue RFC in New York City, and even coached the Nigerian national team in the 2012 Africa Cup.

David Butcher was a professional and semi-professional player for just under 10 years. He played in England, France, Ireland, Scotland and retired in 2006 due to injury.He then worked for Scottish Rugby for 8 years as their performance coach, focusing on talent acquisition and performance development, as well as working as a specialist scrum coach.He’s the current Rugby Ontario High Performance Manager and is based in Toronto, Canada.

Gabriel Fulcher is a former international for Ireland who won 20 caps between 1994 to 1998 and was also a member of the Ireland squad at the 1995 Rugby World Cup. He played his club rugby with Leinster and the London Irish, captaining Leinster for the 1998-1999 season. As a coach, he’s had roles with Leinster U20, Ireland U18 Schools, Belvedere College and St Mary’s College. He’s now the head coach for UBC Old Boys in Vancouver, British Columbia, and, shortly after our interview, was named as BC's provincial head coach.

Andy Muir is the Managing Director of Coach Logic, which he started in 2012 with business partner Mark Cairns. He met Mark whilst playing rugby at Currie RFC, a Premiership club in Edinburgh, Scotland.Supported by his wife Claire and kept 'honest' by his 16 month old son Jamie, this former college lecturer in Sports Science has a real interest in how coaches get the most out of the players they work with.Contact Coach Logic via:[email protected]://www.coach-logic.com/https://www.youtube.com/user/CoachLogichttps://twitter.com/coachlogic

Curry Hitchborn is a longtime servant to rugby in British Columbia, Canada. He’s had numerous coaching roles, ranging from BC u17 boys to Capilano Senior Men, and is now into his 3rd year as the forwards coach for the University of British Colombia. We’ve coached together in the Canada u17 programme and I really enjoyed chatting to him in this episode.

Reed Maltbie is a 26-year veteran coach with a Masters Degree in Sport Behavior and Performance and a Masters Degree in Education. He’s coached at all levels of the game, from age 5 recreation players to adult professional players. Spent time coaching in High School soccer, collegiate soccer, Olympic Development for USSF, and in the NPSL Professional ranks. He’s ran performance camps, worked as a teacher and is currently on a mission to help change the culture of youth sports in America by empowering coaches through a more multi-disciplinary approach to educating children, focusing on coach communication, athlete empowerment, ethics in sport, and developing champions beyond the game. He writes for SoccerNation, Amplified Soccer, and several other magazines, appeared on TedX and also has a book coming out, titled "What's Your Echo."

Ray McLean founded Leading Teams in 1992 and developed a model that would help teams to align behaviours and actions with their values. Before starting Leading Teams, he worked as a leadership officer with the Air Force for 6 years. Prior to that, he was a Phys Ed teacher for 10 years. He has published two books, ‘Any Given Team’ and ‘Team Work’. Leading Teams has worked extensively with many sporting organisations, including the NSW Waratahs and other Super Rugby franchises.

Keir Wenham-Flatt is the strength and conditioning coach for Argentina Rugby and is currently in England with the team at the Rugby World Cup. He started his S&C career with London Wasps as the academy S&C from 2010-2013. He then spent 6 months as head of S&C with Rotherham Titans before taking on the Argentina role in 2013, as well as spending a period of time with the Sydney Roosters rugby league club as head of strength, speed and power 2013-14.He’s also the owner/operator of the RugbyStrengthCoach.com where he hosts the only online community for developing strength coaches.

Stuart Armstrong is the Player Pathways Manager for the RFU. We discuss his background, role with the RFU, talent ID vs talent development, player retention, the obsession with size in talent ID and more. For some great information on developing athletes, Check out Stuart's blog, The Talent Equation.

Jack Hanratty, from Leinster to Nova Scotia. Jack discusses his journey from Ireland to Canada, questioning techniques of his athletes, games-based philosophy and working with scrum halves.

This episode is a brief introduction by myself regarding the goal of the podcast. I discuss my background, coaching history and how I'm hoping to see the show develop over time. Thanks for listening!

Tom Farrow is a performance coach and rugby combat consultant. He is the owner of Areté Performance (http://www.arete-performance.com/), a sports performance and personal training company based in London. Tom worked for Wasps RFC for the past 3 years as a strength and conditioning coach, both with their senior team and more recently with the academy. Tom has also consulted as a combat coach (applying wrestling techniques to rugby) for Wasps, England Sevens and England Women’s rugby, as well as various other clubs and schools in London and the surrounding Home Counties. Tom has recently taken on a position with Speedworks as a Performance Coach, working under renowned sprint specialist Jonas Dodoo. Speedworks oversee the training of some of the country’s fastest sprinters as well as World and Olympic champion long jumper Greg Rutherford. Tom has also recently been appointed the UK Director of the International Strength and Conditioning Institute, a newly born, educational association that promotes sensible, evidence based sport training methodology as well as bridges the gap between science and practice.

Gavin Hickie is the Head Coach of Dartmouth Rugby in New Hampshire, USA, and is also the current Collegiate All Americans Head Coach as well.He’s a former professional player who has had stints with Leinster, London Irish, Worcester Warriors & Leicester Tigers, and has also played for Ireland at various levels, including 7s. He is the co-creator of the website LineoutCoach.com and is also an author for the very first time, with his new book titled: Rugby Revealed

Mark Upton, originally from Adelaide in South Australia, took up his position as the Coaching Science Manager at the English Institute of Sport early in 2014, after 12 years working in coaching and sport science at a professional Australian Rules Football Club.In his current role, Mark works closely with UK Sport's world-class coach development programmes and has a brief to help coaches optimise their practice & learning environments in regards to decision making, performing under pressure, technical change and developing problem-solving athletes. Mark is also a co-creator of myfastestmile, a social enterprise designed to help people be their best by encouraging organisations to create functional coaching systems and dynamic learning environments