Are You a Coach… or a Coaching Teacher?
Written by Coach Rob Quickfall
There's a difference between being a coach and being a coaching teacher, and it's bigger than most of us want to admit.
Anyone can run a session. Cones out, players organised, drill explained, energy up. It can look busy, sharp, even professional. But that's not the question that matters. The question is: did your players actually learn something?
That's the standard. Not how good the session looked, but rather whether the learning happened.
I've stood on enough sidelines now, youth pitches, academy fields, elite training grounds, to know this truth doesn't change with the level. A good coaching session and a good learning session aren't always the same thing. It's easy to get wrapped up in what we are doing, the activities, the structure, the intensity, the equipment, the plan, and lose sight of what the players are walking away with.
So try this at the end of training. Ask them one simple question: "What did you learn today?"
If they can tell you something new, something they understand better, something they can now do with more awareness, good, learning happened. If they can't answer that? We ran a session. We didn't necessarily teach.
Rugby Is a Subject
Here's a trap a lot of us fall into: assuming experience equals knowledge.
"I've played rugby for X many years." "I know how to pass." "I know how to tackle." "I know how to defend." Fair enough, but doing something for a long time isn't the same as understanding it.
Think back to school. Most of us did maths. Ask any of us right now to explain Pythagoras' theorem and watch how many hands don't go up. Being exposed to something isn't the same as learning it properly.
Rugby's no different. A player can throw a thousand passes and never really grasp why they passed when they did, or what space they were reading, or how that decision shaped what happened next. A player can make hundreds of tackles and still not understand height, footwork, connection, body position, decision-making, or what's supposed to happen the instant after contact.
Repetition doesn't create learning on its own. Intentional teaching does.
And this is where coaches split into two camps. One camp assumes time on the field is the curriculum. The other treats rugby the way a good teacher treats mathematics or language: as a subject with structure, sequence, and depth that has to be taught deliberately, not absorbed by accident. If you want your players to actually own the game, you have to join the second camp.
Stop Coaching the Drill. Teach the Game.
The drill was never the point. The drill is the vehicle, just how we get players to understand the game a little better.
So instead of "can you pass?" ask:
Why do we pass?
What did you see?
Where was the space?
What information did you have?
What made that the right call?
What could you have done differently?
Instead of "make the tackle" ask:
What did you see?
What was the ball carrier trying to do?
Where did you want to make contact?
What did your feet do?
What happened after contact?
What would you improve next time?
That's teaching. And teaching builds players who can think, not just players who can perform on command.
A Framework for Questions Over Answers
If you want this to become a habit and not just a nice idea, give yourself a simple structure to lean on. I use three buckets with coaches I mentor:
Perception questions, such as: What did you see, what did you notice, what changed in front of you? These train the eye.
Decision questions such as: What did you decide, why that option over another, what were you weighing up? These train the mind.
Execution questions such as: What did your body do, what worked, what would you adjust? These train the connection between thought and action.
Most coaches only ever ask the third kind. We correct technique (hips lower, feet faster, hands higher) without ever finding out whether the player saw the picture that should have triggered the technique in the first place. Fix the perception and the decision, and the execution often sorts itself out with far less coaching noise.
The Best Coaches Create Better Learners
We're not trying to build players who need us to tell them what to do forever. We're trying to build players who can see it, understand it, decide, and act on their own, under pressure, without us on the sideline shouting the answer.
That means handing over ownership. Ask questions. Create problems, not just solutions. Let them decide. Let them get it wrong. Then help them work out why it worked, or why it didn't.
We don't always need to hand them the answer. Sometimes the best thing a coach can say is another question:
"What did you see?" "What led you to that decision?" "What would you do differently?" "What did you learn?"
Those questions are what build rugby intelligence, not our answers.
I'd take this further, actually, because it applies to us as much as it applies to players. The coaches I've mentored who grow fastest are the ones who stop needing me to hand them the answer too. Early on, they want a script. Later, they start bringing me their own read on a session and asking whether it holds up. That's the same shift we're trying to create in our players, dependence giving way to ownership, just one level up the chain.
Don't Confuse Activity With Development.
A session can be loud. It can be intense, fun, look brilliant from the sideline, send players home exhausted. None of that means anyone actually developed.
Sweat isn't learning. Repetition isn't understanding. Activity isn't development.
Our job is to connect the dots between what we're doing and what they're learning. Every session needs a purpose. Every activity needs a reason. Every word we say on the field needs to add something. And every player should walk off knowing a bit more about the game, and about themselves as a player, than they did when they arrived.
The Coach's Own Blind Spot
Here's the uncomfortable part. The coaches who run the loudest, busiest, most "impressive-looking" sessions are often the ones getting the most validation from parents, from clubs, from other coaches watching on. Nobody claps for a quiet, question-led session where players are standing still, thinking. It doesn't look like much from the sideline.
So part of becoming a coaching teacher is being willing to run a session that looks less impressive to the people watching, because you know it's doing more for the people playing. That takes a bit of courage. It also takes trust in your own judgement, which is exactly the same thing we're asking our players to develop.
Become a Coaching Teacher
Being a coaching teacher means asking yourself, constantly: What am I teaching? Why am I teaching it? How will I know it landed?
And the big one, the one that matters most: what did the players actually take away from today?
Build this into your own routine, not just your players'. After every session, before you pack the cones away, write down one sentence: "What did they learn today?" If you can't finish that sentence honestly, that's your feedback, not theirs.
We have to stay students of the game ourselves. Keep learning. Keep questioning. Keep developing. Keep teaching. Because the better we get at teaching the game, the better our players get at understanding it.
To every coach reading this, whether you're running your first junior session on a Saturday morning or managing a professional environment, the invitation is the same. Don't just put on sessions. Don't just keep players busy. Don't just coach the drill.
Teach the player. Teach the game. Create the learning.
Because we don't need more coaches who can run a good session. We need coaching teachers who can change how players think, understand, and play, and who can pass that same standard on to the next coach coming up behind them.
Keep learning. Keep teaching. Keep getting better.
Comments