Brian McDermott kicked off the Leeds Rhinos Foundation Coach Education programme this week with the first of four sessions scheduled for 2015 at the Leeds Rugby Academy in front of an audience of 50 coaches from across the region
The Leeds Rhinos Foundation’s Coach Education programme, now in its 4th year, returned this week to the Leeds Rugby Academy training ground for 50 amateur and community coaches from Leeds and the wider area to share best practice and up to date coaching information.
The session had a good representation from across the region with coaches coming over from different parts of Leeds, Castleford, Dewsbury, Catterick and other areas, with many who are regular attenders of the coach education events and fall under the Leeds Rhinos Foundation’s Ambassador Clubs scheme.
The programme headed up by Brian McDermott and assisted by Scholarship coach Steve Fox, offers coaches of all levels and age groups a chance to gain an insight into some of the coaching philosophy, drills and techniques used by the Leeds Rhinos.
As a professional coach Brian devotes a lot of his time and efforts to coaching in the community for the betterment of Rugby League and the two time Grand Final winner explained the importance of the programme he delivers:
“Coaching players is great and if was to go down and coach a team of players in the community it would be good for that particular team and in two of three years’ time, half of those players might be playing and half of them might not be, the real worth for me is in coaching the coaches and then they can go and pass that on.”
Monday’s session was split in to the familiar format of a classroom talk followed by an example training session, allowing the audience an opportunity to see the coaching first-hand and the ability to feedback during the session as part of the interactive format.
Oulton Raiders under 16’s who currently have 8 players in the Rhinos Scholarship programme, provided the players for the session which was based on Brian McDermott’s emphasis on muscle memory, enjoyment, creating the right environment, challenging the players and not talking too much to let the players play and develop on their own.
2015 will see three more sessions based at the Kirkstall site and will give different players from the local amateur teams a chance to take part in the coaching across the year, as the programme looks to continue to develop the Rugby League’s network of community coaches.
Brian and his staff would like to thank all those who attended and look forward to seeing another good number at the upcoming sessions.
The video of the first Coach Education session is available to view below: