British coaches need to travel south

Trams are always a great attraction, particularly if they take you where cars cannot. After all, you are unlikely to be caught in a tram jam so the chance to use the system in Montpellier and Nantes has been eagerly embraced during the World Cup.

The system in Nantes takes the passenger cross town, from the Stade de la Beaujoire past the stately pile of the Dukes of Brittany where a series of streets weave their way and offer the chance of a quiet meal before the big match. A passing bevy of English coaches, though, is a welcome diversion: Kevin Bowring, the RFU's coaching director, Nigel Redman and Mark Mapletoft, who look after England's up-and-coming sides.

Mapletoft, capped once out of Gloucester against Argentina ten years ago, is particularly eager to build his experience and regrets the limited opportunities to work in the southern hemisphere. It is, of course, one of those curiosities that the northern hemisphere affords so many opportunities for southern-hemisphere coaches to work within their competitions but it does not work in reverse.

The three top dogs in New Zealand and Australia - Graham Henry, Wayne Smith and Steve Hansen, John Connolly, Michael Foley and Scott Johnson - have all benefitted from working in England, Wales and France. It may, of course, be that ambitious coaches wanting to travel down under are not considered good enough to find work at a decent level but they have seldom been short of their own talent in either New Zealand or Australia.

Coaches do meet, of course, at the various seminars organised by the International Rugby Board or, most recently, by the Six Nations in Wales. They do exchange news and views, spark ideas off each other but lengthy exposure to another country - such as players have now and again (think Martin Johnson and Kevin Yates in New Zealand) - must lead to greater understanding of the problems in presenting rugby as a genuine world sport.

Comments

[PeterJ]

NH coaches coming south? More head in the sand stuff. Who would employ them?
The only thing SH coaches going north benefit from is $$$ and a dose of dealing with incompetence and the self serving politics of administrators.
Down here they'd be about as useful as nuclear waste.
If they want to come as paying observers sobeit.
But what would happen to them when they returned?