The Elite Rugby Coach - a ‘Red2blue’ Story
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PHIL DAVIES THE ELITE RUGBY COACH - A ‘RED2BLUE’ STORY What was happening - Setting the Scene: Phil Davies is best known to many The programme adapted and delivered rugby followers as a fantastic dominant by Gazing Performance for the RFU beast of a No 8 who played 46 matches covered areas from the Performance for Wales and had a lengthy career at review Department Leadership Team, Llanelli during the late 1980’s and early to supporting the programme of 90’s. But it would be also fair to say that elite coach development led by Kevin his coaching career has stretched over a Bowring, an elite referees programme longer period and been just as amazing and the England Elite Academy in terms of clubs and international Programme developed and led by teams coached, and achievements he Brian Ashton. has had across those teams. The earlier years of Phil’s coaching career coincided with Gazing “ No 8 who played 46 matches Performance being established and the for Wales and had a lengthy Red2Blue Mental Skills concept being introduced to the England RFU High career at Llanelli during the Performance Department in 2002. late 1980’s and early 90’s” CUSTOMER STORY © Gazing Performance Systems Licence Holders 2020 What did we do - how did Phil learn about Red2Blue? It was in the early 2000’s that the concept of ‘elite performance coaching’ was really beginning to widen out and “ Phil was already establishing incorporate specialist input across the his approach to coaching whole performance equation. These areas included physical development, as being constantly open to technical skills, game understanding and improvement and innovation decision making, life and media skills, and it was this characteristic and increasingly a focus on mindset that led him to engaging and mental skills. It was in this context that Gazing were engaged by the RFU Gazing Performance and to introduce ‘Red2Blue’ as a platform for integrating ‘Red2Blue’. developing and coaching mental skills for performance under pressure. A core part of the programme was the initial support for premiership academy coaches as well as age group team coaches. Stuart Lancaster was amongst that group and working at the time with Phil up at Leeds Tykes in the English Premiership. Phil was already establishing his approach to coaching as being constantly open to improvement and innovation and it was this characteristic that led him to engaging Gazing Performance and integrating ‘Red2Blue’ at a critical time when Leeds Tykes progress in the top flight of professional rugby had faltered. (See Leeds Tykes case study) We can let Phil tell the rest of his journey with Red2Blue in his own words! CUSTOMER STORY © Gazing Performance Systems Licence Holders 2020 How did it help? Here’s what our customer said: The first time I was introduced to Gazing It has allowed all the teams I have was back in 2004 as part of the RFU Elite worked with to be preparation coach education program. driven and not outcome driven. My initial reaction was how easy and Adaptability of the system has allowed effective it was to use in the fast-paced people and teams to grow step by step environment of professional sport in order to achieve the outcome goals. (Rugby Union). It has also been used successfully in different countries around the world. During this period Gazing’s model has been a regularly used program with I can only, HIGHLY recommend the all the teams we have coached and in R2B system as it really does produce particular with Leeds Tykes in 2005 when spectacular results when teams need to we went onto Win the Powergen cup deal with real performance pressure. and more recently with the Namibian team that qualified and went on to play PHIL DAVIES and compete at the Rugby world cup LEADER AND PROFESSIONAL 2019 in Japan. RUGBY UNION COACH KEY LEARNING’S USING R2B How we were able to clearly identify pressure and deal with it effectively Performance assessment tool which is very easy to use Triangle system of Structure, Skills and Mindset Find out more and follow us: @gazingtraining Gazing Performance Systems Gazing Performance gazingtraining gazing.com CUSTOMER STORY © Gazing Performance Systems Licence Holders 2020.