Inside the life of a Head Coach

Wednesday 16 October 2019

A coach sinks their heart and soul into a sports team. They pore over every aspect of their game: how can the team improve, what weaknesses do the opponents have, what strategy is most effective? And then they are responsible for their players as well: how are they performing, how are they feeling, are they working too hard?

By the time game day comes, all the coach can do is sit on the side line and hope everything goes to plan. Little do many know that hours and hours of time has gone in to that plan, with every little detail being scrutinized to make it as robust as possible.

For the Guernsey Raiders, that work comes from the coaches, led by Head Coach Jordan Reynolds, who has been with the island’s prestigious rugby team for 14 seasons. It is his job to keep the Raiders in form, and ready for each and every game, and also bare in mind that legendary saying: “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face”, or tackled to the floor in the Raider’s case. 

Straight away, Mr Reynolds wanted to dispel the myth that his job consisted of being in the sun all day. Quite the contrary, in fact. Hours of study goes into every game that the Raiders play. Hours of speaking to the players, hours of preparing the training, and hours of picking apart each and every element of previous matches.

“A lot of people look at coaching and see the Saturday [game day],” he said. “I would honestly say in my role as the Head Coach I am 80 to 90% planning, off the pitch, and then 10 to 20% on the pitch. Most of my work is done in an office. 

“You plan, you review, and then you execute.”

Pictured: Mr Reynolds on the side lines. 

For the Raiders, games are on a weekly rotation. Each Saturday they play a new game. So that gives them seven days to prepare, improve, and try to give themselves the best chance of winning.

From Mr Reynolds point of view, the second a match is over, the planning for the next begins, and there is a lot that goes in to that planning. The first thing the team does when coming off the pitch, he said, is to have a quick chat. What went well? What went badly?

If they won, they celebrate, and the Raiders sing their famous victory song.

But by the time Sunday morning rolls around, everyone has the next game on their minds.

Mr Reynolds said players often text and message him with questions about how they played, and what they can improve – and that is the first stage of his week’s rotation, reviewing each player, and giving them feedback.

“We have got to go back to a Sunday, we have just played on a Saturday, and the reviews and stuff will start the next day. There is talk about having a day off – there is no days off for coaches, you have players talking to you on a Sunday and we do reviews from there. They go all the way through until Friday. Generally, it is by Friday that you want to have it all wrapped up.”  

“Every single thing that you want to develop for a player, you will have to have a plan in place to make sure they can achieve that result. So, you have got to actually plan – identify what a problem was with, say, a tackle, it could have been the way he positioned his feet, and then we will put a plan in place of how to train and get him better.”

Pictured: Mr Reynolds sat down to speak to CONNECT magazine. 

Then Monday comes around: “On a Monday we will do all of the analysis that we need to do. We will review ourselves as a team, what areas worked well, what areas didn’t work well and what areas we need to improve on, and we try to balance that 50/50 – 50 positives and 50 bits we have to work on. 

“So, we look at that, and then we review the opposition that we are playing. What areas do we need to fix? And do those coincide with the team that we are playing? You can over focus on some areas when it doesn’t actually make a difference to the team we are playing.”

That analysis consists of examining both the Raiders themselves, and also their competitors.  

Mr Reynolds said he spends as much time watching footage of the games his team have played as he does watching opponent’s footage, looking for patterns which they can exploit to win.  

“Every team will be slightly different and it’s up to us to make sure we can find out what those weak areas are in any opposition and also ask do we have the manpower, ability, or skill to execute what we need to do to win? We go through and look at all those parts and decide we do on this, and we don’t on that, so this is going to be our focus,” he said.

“From that we set a plan with the players - when we meet on a Tuesday for training we look together at the footage of what we did well, and we will look at their footage and decide what the plan we are going to put in place is.” 

And while Mr Reynolds referred to Mike Tyson’s quote of plans always falling apart, he said having one was still key.

“We don’t get it right all the time, but it doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be perfect when you do the analysis, if you have 15 guys all doing the same thing in the same direction, then you are going to find some success.” 

Wednesday then sees Mr Reynolds and his other coaches reaffirming what they had learnt since the last game, and what the plan was. They break that plan down from an overall team plan into ‘modules’, or smaller plans for each section of the team, like the line out plan, the forward pack plan and so on.  

“On the Thursday we will come in and refine what you have learnt from the week, what they remember, and work on execution. It is a less intense kind of day on a Thursday, but we just make sure the information is going in,” he said.

“By the time you get to Friday there is nothing else you can do on an information front, they aren’t going to take anything else in, so you have got to make sure they know what they are doing before then.

“Making sure everyone is taking in the information is the key, because if we have a squad of 35 players, there are 35 ways of taking in information to take account for.

“Some people understand in different ways. See things from different views. That is the hardest part – finding ways to get people to understand what we are doing and motivating the team every week on the back of that.”

After that week’s hard work, Saturday will always come around which means another game for the Raiders. If they are playing away, Mr Reynolds said they would be up early and on a flight, discussing their strategy as they travelled.

If they are playing at home, the team are down at Footes Lane hours before anyone else, with everything having been set up the day before to make sure everything is as smooth sailing as possible. 

“Once again it is about reaffirming what we have learnt all week. Some of the guys might want to speak to us, some might not, then what we will do is have a team meeting and hour before the game. We talk about everything that we have discussed that week, and we are also trying to motivate the team as a collective. 

“We go out, have 10 minutes to do some ball work and stretching, have a 15-minute warm-up based around our strategy and after that, we come in. By that stage, we can’t really do much more about what happens. You are hoping by that stage they are ready, all I am doing is asking questions and they are the ones coming up with answers.”

Half time is obviously the last contact the coaches get with their players before the game is over. Mr Reynolds goes by the rule of nothing ever being good enough, and always pushing for evolution throughout the game. He said they did this even if they were winning 40-0. 

“We have a quick discussion with the players, and ask what we need to improve, adapt. It puts more pressure on the opposition as well.”

Straight after the game, the team come together again to discuss the pros and cons of the game, and then Mr Reynolds week-long cycle starts again.

To read the full interview, pick up a copy of CONNECT from Waitrose or another pick up point. 

Pictured top: Jordan Reynolds.