Question: In any sport there is talk of striking the right balance between coaching and over-coaching, how does that apply in rugby and is there a difference between forwards and backs?

Andy Friend (AF): There is a big fear of over coaching in the game of rugby and I think since the game has gone professional coaches have come in and thought 'I'm a full time coach, I've got to fill up my day and I've got to find ways to keep you boys interested and look for things that, maybe in the game, aren't always there. From an Australian point of view we have suffered from over coaching. We've got into this pattern play scenario which was very successful early on with the Brumbies but you can see in Australian rugby now how we've got robots who play the game, and that's a product of over coaching, so we are quite conscious of that. As a coach you need to offer some kind of a structure and certainly some skill development and direct players the right way but you also have to let players use their natural flair and let them do what got them into their current position. Whether it's a fantastic flick pass or whether it's a little chip and chase you've got to allow them to do that. So we do try to offer structure but we are also very conscious of the fact that we don't want to get players into one mode of playing which we touched on before with the players not being able to make decisions on the pitch. If we continued to keep telling them the options through the water boy that to me is over coaching. That's where you're telling the players what you're seeing but they're not actually thinking about it. What we are trying to do at the moment is actually allow them thinking for themselves. We've got the opportunity against some opposition to take a couple of hits and have a couple of tries scored against us, bring 'em back at half time and get back out there and do it. Hopefully over the course of this year we can develop a style of play where the players are thinking and looking at the things that are in front of them rather than waiting for us to give them calls.

John Kingston (JK): From the forwards' point of view there is a lot more cohesion and togetherness required unit-wise. For example to build a lineout isn't about instinctive thought it's about getting the right processes, similarly the scrummage and similarly, quite frankly, the restart work. What Andy is talking about there I thoroughly concur with, it's not about taking away the natural instincts of the player. The instictiveness of the forwards is very important in broken play. If we take an example, and I'm sure you've all supported Harlequins long enough to see this example and which again is in no way to be rude with regard to last season, if you recall Tom Williams the night when he came into the side the night we played Saracens and played some wonderful rugby, I think he came in the week before when we played Castres - Tom came in and he couldn't give a flying 'hoot' about whether or not if it was the right thing to kick the ball into row E from a certain part  of the pitch and he played with his instincts and he lit the place up. It didn’t matter whether he was playing on the wing or fullback or whatever and I think you compare and contrast that with, maybe, a picture of a players at Harlequins who if they catch a ball in a broken field scenario as a back three look round, half freeze, wonder what they actually ought to be doing and then kicking the ball up in the air or kicking the ball away to someone else rather than backing their instincts. I think that’s when you start to think that you’ve got it wrong, it’s when players are actually frightened of doing something, when they are just trying to minimise the error count, that’s when you realise that the players have got to have a framework but they’ve got to have a framework in which to express themselves.

Andy Friend (AF): Just to make one more point on that, it was interesting at the Sedgley Park game at the weekend when one of the back three came in and said ‘I never thought I’d say this at Harlequins but we’re trying to play too much rugby at the moment’, and in a way it was quite a refreshing comment, when I first came to the club the confidence wasn’t there and a simple game of touch wasn’t a simple game of touch it was a game of fear more than anything. Now we’ve probably pushed the boys too far in a sense and they just want to play football but are not necessarily seeing that there are times when you don’t need to play football – when they’ve got a good chase up and there are six men bearing down on you, so for him to say that was a good indication that they feel that they have got the freedom but they’ve got to go back and be smart about what they are doing and play some percentages rather than just throwing caution to the wind all the time.

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