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“BETTER PEOPLE MAKE BETTER PLAYERS”: EXPLORING THE ROLE OF CHARACTER IN RUGBY UNION TALENT IDENTIFICATION Nicholas Foan A thesis submitted for the degree of MSD Sport and Exercise School of Sport Exercise and Rehabilitation Science University of Essex Date of Submission for Examination (October 2020) ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Firstly, I would like to thank all who took part in this research. You took the time to share a bit over your vast collective knowledge with a random student asking strange questions about virtues and character, and I appreciate that. I learnt a lot from you all. A big shout out has to go to the members of Team Research Lab (Henry, Kyran, Emily, Phoebe, Julius, and Trist). It was great to get to know you all, this year was the first time I actually enjoyed group meetings. Even when they moved online, which is saying something. To those still researching, I wish you the best of luck - I bet you wish you were writing you acknowledgments right now, don’t you? One of the largest thanks (if you can even quantify gratefulness) must go to my wonderful parents. Your continued love and support, even in the face of me struggling to describe what I’m researching, has enabled me to do this and for that am I truly thankful. Mathilde, my amazing girlfriend and lockdown buddy. Thankyou for keeping me sane and always believing in me. It goes without saying that I couldn’t have done this thing without you. To my supervisors John and Ed, I don’t know how you do it. Thank you so much for you continued positivity and belief in me. You both made this whole process relatively enjoyable, and from what I can tell in academia that’s high praise indeed. I have learnt so much from the opportunities and support you have provided me and for that, I owe you a beer (or two). This has been a strange year; I have had twenty-three of them and this is by far the strangest I have experienced. Yet, I remain optimistic. My study of character has taught me resilience and perseverance in the face of negativity among a host of other virtues. Which begs the question? How did I not become a professional rugby player? TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS 3 LIST OF TABLES 5 LIST OF FIGURES 6 Abstract 7 CHAPTER ONE : INTRODUCTION 8 Rugby Union 9 CHAPTER TWO: REVIEW OF THE LITERATURE 13 Examining the Role of Psychological components in Rugby Union Talent Identification Programmes: A Review of the literature 13 Abstract 13 Examining the Role of psychological components in Rugby Union Talent Identification Programmes: A Review of the literature 14 Character 16 Talent Identification Programmes 17 Rugby Union Research 22 Consistent Terminology 23 Scope of review 24 Eligibility criteria 24 Discussion 26 Character, talent identification and rugby union. 29 Future research 31 Conclusion 32 CHAPTER THREE: STUDY ONE 34 An Exploration of the Role of Character in the Identification of Talent Across Tier One Rugby Nations 34 ABSTRACT 34 An Exploration of the Role of Character in the Identification of Talent Across Tier One Rugby Nations 35 Character and Rugby 37 Methods 39 Ethical considerations 40 Eligibility Criteria 40 Participants 40 Interviews 41 Data analysis 42 Results 44 Understanding character 44 Aspects of good character in the talent identification process 49 Performance Character 49 Industriousness 50 Resilience 53 Perseverance 56 Intellectual character 57 Curiosity 58 Self-Reflection 59 Moral character 61 Self-regulation 61 Honesty 62 Self-awareness 64 Civic character 65 Citizenship/civility 65 Cultural awareness 68 Discussion 70 Study Limitations 76 Future study 77 Conclusion 78 CHAPTER FOUR: GENERAL DISCUSSION 80 REFERENCES 85 APPENDICES 96 Appendix (A) - Interview Guide 97 Appendix (B)- SPIDER Table 98 Appendix C- Ethical Approval 99 LIST OF TABLES 1. Participant career statistics 2. Table of example codes LIST OF FIGURES 1. The key Stages in the talent identification and development process (adapted from Williams & Reilly, 2000). 2. PRISMA Flow-diagram. Outlining search strategy of the electronic databases 3. Content Analysis Hierarchical Results Diagram. Abstract Character and rugby union are historically linked with governing bodies, stakeholders and media all citing its importance for rugby union performance. Recent years have seen an increase in the prevalence of talent identification programmes in professional sports, rugby union included. However, little is known about the importance of psychological characteristics, less so character in rugby union talent identification. A literature review of psychological components of talent identification was conducted, with a focus on the application to Rugby Union. A more concerted effort needs to be made by researchers to define and differentiate the psychological components clearly to allow for more diverse research methodologies to take place and further the rugby union talent identification literature. To investigate the role character in the talent identification process in rugby union, a qualitative design was used. Interviews were conducted with 9 rugby union talent identification experts which focused on the components of character they valued most in potential professional players. A multidimensional understanding of character was used to analyse the aspects most valuable. No unified understanding of character exists in rugby union. However, it was deemed as especially important by stakeholders especially performance character virtues such as industriousness, resilience, and perseverance. Moral character was second most valued by participants including virtues, self-regulation, self- awareness, and honesty. These findings were then discussed in relation to current practices and further research directions were outlined. CHAPTER ONE : INTRODUCTION After a bitterly disappointing loss to South Africa in the Tri-Nations Cup, newly appointed New Zealand head coach, Sir Graham Henry, gathered his coaching staff in an attempt to understand the reason for their loss. From this meeting a new team mantra was coined : “Better people make better players” (1). The new mantra was grounded in the idea that if a player's character was nurtured off field , then those improvements would be seen on the pitch. This concept has been propagated and like other aspects of sports psychology even anecdotally made its way into other performance driven domains such as business (2). The English word “character” is derived from the ancient greek “kharaktēr” : a tool that was used to imprint a distinctive mark upon a coin. It is now defined as the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual (3). The concept of character is much discussed in academia and the media with different understandings being adopted (e.g., personality), however, this thesis shall adopt a virtue based account of character built on the definition from Book II of Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics (4). Aristotle suggested two kinds of human excellence, excellence of thought and excellence of character. Excellence of thought was considered the collection of intellectual virtues such as philosophical wisdom, technical expertise and accomplishment. Excellences of character on the other hand, were seen as the embodiment of moral virtues such as honesty, courage, and fortitude. Aristotle suggested that an individual cannot truly embody these virtues, yet lies somewhere between deficiency and excess with the virtue being the mean of the two extremes. For example, the vice of deficiency of courage would be cowardice but an excess of courage would be the vice of rashness. Character can be seen as the collection of deficiencies or excesses from the mean across the intellectual and character virtues. More recent interpretations of a virtue based account of character have seen multidimensional concepts of character proposed (5– 7). According to Bredemeier and Shields (6), character can be defined as a multidimensional set of dispositions that predispose an individual to experience specific emotions, cognize in particular ways and behave in a certain manner within similar situations. Rugby Union Character and the game of rugby union have been linked since its conception (8,9). As the now famed story goes; a young man by the name of William Webb Ellis, a pupil of Rugby school who had a blatant disregard for the rules of association football, once picked up the ball and ran. Thus, creating one of rugby union's most distinctive features (8). Despite a lack of proper evidence to suggest this is true, the story has persisted and made its way into sporting lore. If we are to understand why character and rugby union are so intertwined, greater attention should be paid to the school’s headmaster; Thomas Arnold. The headmaster of Rugby School from 1828 to 1841 he was one of the most prominent proponents of Muscular Christianity a philosophical movement which believed that Chrisitian, imperialist and moral virtues could be developed through athletic pursuits (9). From the beginning Thomas Arnold used rugby as a means to cultivate the sort of character he felt imperialist Britain needed at the time. Indeed, as described in Thomas Hughes’ novel ‘Tom Brown’s schooldays’ (Set in 1830’s Rugby school and thought to be based on the authors experiences) describes the school as “a little corner of the British empire which is thoroughly, wisely, and strongly ruled (10). As the sport spread to around the world, the idea that rugby union builds character remains. This is most clearly shown by World Rugby who adopted the motto “Building character since 1886” -- the date which World Rugby was founded (11). Just over 100 years later, in 1995 rugby union became one of the last major international sports to become professional when the unions from New Zealand, South Africa and Australia founded the Tri-Nations Cup (12). Rugby union is a continuous contact team sport which is characterised by players having to alternate between attack and defence many times per game while having to focus on more specific positional roles (13).