Blood & Mud

What exactly is a "gameplan"?

 England players talk about them a lot in post-match interviews and we take the piss out of players with a version of them, but what do people mean by a gameplan? 

Yoda Ashton (remember him?) has been quoted this week as saying, ""One of the things I am constantly battling against is the dreaded word gameplan," he said, "That is where everything is prescribed from phase one to six or seven. By doing that, no one ever learns to understand the way the game is played, the way one aspect impacts on another."  His definition - gameplan as phase-by-phase directives - is an interesting, if not entirely correct, one.

Many people, particularly those who have to watch England, refer to the word "gameplan" with the the kind of disgust normally reserved for the c-word in a primetime TV slot.  As if it is something to be reviled; a one-word summation of all that is wrong with the over-drilled, gym-monkey infested, zero-creativity modern approach to rugby. This is wrong.  Any team at any level of any sport must have a "plan", and this plan has several layers.

The first job of a head coach (team manager, Principal Strategy Enabler, or whatever they call themselves these days) is to formulate an approach to the game for his team.  To select a simple decision: are you a rucking side or a mauling side?  If you are a rucking side do you look to ruck through a repetitive number of fast phases via the forwards or do you look to ruck fast and go wide as soon as possible?  etc etc. Once you have come to the conclusion you must then get the coaching team in place to ensure the players have the skills to carry out this general approach.  As a coach you will also agree the creative freedom you want your players to have and tailor your whole coaching strategy to this.  This can take years to reach fruition, especially if you are looking to turn around a culture a la Clive Woodward. 

This is your approach to the game, your philosophy, your strategy.  This never changes as you should have the confidence in your approach to keep working at it to get it and the players right.

Assuming you have all that sorted (no small feat), below this sits your gameplan, or more specifically gameplans.  Unlike your overall approach, your gameplans will change for every game and every opponent.  For example, one team may have a defensively weak 10-12 channel and so you will request your 9 and 10 to focus attacks there; or perhaps one team have a particularly weak ruck defence, thus you will work your carrying forwards into that area on repeated phases, and so on.  

However, the worst thing any coach can do is lay down too many "patterns". Those who have played know the type - e.g. "we always go three drives blindside then we go open to the backs", which then leads to an overlap going begging because the forwards are taking in their second, robotic blind-side drive when the ball should have gone.  It is this approach which is too prevalent in too many teams, certainly in the Guinness Prem and moreso with England.  

Having no plan and believing that somehow good players will figure it out is stupid, but equally stupid is drilling and planning all spark out of a team.  It seems an obvious thing to say but the evidence of this happening is all to prevalent.

It is this micro-managed approach to the game that Ashton is railing against in the quote above, but a gameplan need not be like this.  It is not the idea of a gameplan that is wrong, just the gameplans many coaches seem to be using.  

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What exactly is a "gameplan"?

 England players talk about them a lot in post-match interviews and we take the piss out of players with a version of them, but what do people mean by a gameplan? 

Yoda Ashton (remember him?) has been quoted this week as saying, ""One of the things I am constantly battling against is the dreaded word gameplan," he said, "That is where everything is prescribed from phase one to six or seven. By doing that, no one ever learns to understand the way the game is played, the way one aspect impacts on another."  His definition - gameplan as phase-by-phase directives - is an interesting, if not entirely correct, one.

Many people, particularly those who have to watch England, refer to the word "gameplan" with the the kind of disgust normally reserved for the c-word in a primetime TV slot.  As if it is something to be reviled; a one-word summation of all that is wrong with the over-drilled, gym-monkey infested, zero-creativity modern approach to rugby. This is wrong.  Any team at any level of any sport must have a "plan", and this plan has several layers.