Thoughts on Coaching Girls

February 5th, 2008

Whilst Girls’ (and Women’s) Rugby is not fundamentally different to the male game, coaching female teenagers is not the same as coaching male teenagers. A coach with years’ experience with boys’ teams is not going to get the best from girls if he or she treats them as if there was no difference.

Here are a few thoughts from others. I claim no magic insights - I’m not a coach, and have not been involved in boys’ rugby since I was a (mediocre) player a very very long time ago.

The first is with thanks to Spike Milligan from Swaffham:

In the few training sessions I have taken (Swaffham has a new Girls Section consisting largely of inexperienced U15s) and others I’ve observed it is very clear that a totally different approach (to boys) is needed to effectively coach the girls. For example with the boys squad you can very quickly set up a scenario and throw them into it. They will not have listened but will have a clear thought of what they just heard so a series of stops and adjustments are needed to guide them into the areas I want to focus on and even then the tendency to excel as an individual is still strong for them. An example is we are going to run a quick session on using an overlap to allow a winger to score, set up 4 v 5 and start. The first pass is good but the runner tries to break the line ignoring the overlap and thinking he can score.

Having tried the same approach with the girls team, they want to check understanding, ask loads of questions(normally very loudly and at the same time) and ensure as a group they understand and then go out and execute the move with only coaching needed on the technical aspects of the timing of the pass, running lines etc.

The girls also seem to work as a team and are supportive and positive with their team – mates both on the pitch and off it. They have a huge range of skills within the squad with total beginners plying alongside girls who are at CB or higher representation levels. This doesn’t show in their training or playing and they all work hard for each other. Comparing this to the boys again they are times when due to criticising or arguing during a match the team performance has been negatively affected. Admittedly this is not the norm and they do work well as a team but some relationships within it have been tested at times.

The second is with thanks to the indefatigable John Birch of Letchworth.

I was chatting to a local schoolteacher….. about the difference between teaching groups of boys and girls. Her analysis of it was interesting.

Basically she said that boys will respond best to criticism (then followed by praise), but for girls it is the other way around - you should always start with the praise and then follow up with the criticism, ie. how they can improve.

It may seem a minor thing, but if you get it the wrong way round she has found that boys only hear the praise and switch off before you get to the criticism (on the grounds, perhaps, that they think its “job done”), whereas girls worry about the criticism to the extent that perhaps their confidence if hit and so never hear the subsequent praise, or fail to take it on board. She commented that it was one reason why girls do so much better in schools now - because teachers are encouraged to praise and be positive at all times, resulting in an atmosphere where boys level off while girls forge ahead.

Thinking about it I am sure she is right - and it applies equally to coaching as well as formal teaching. It is noticeable how the girls at Letchworth at least have respond differently to different coaches, and I did wonder quite why - quite what the difference was. In retrospect a lot of it I think has been due to some coaches coaching the girls in the same way as they would boys, while others (either because that is their style, or because they subconciously change their style) adopt a different approach.

Try applying the thinking not only to U15s or U18s, but if you run a minis section, might this help attract and retain girls all the way through to when they finish U12, and can play girls-only rugby?

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