Reference

McKay, J., Davids, K., Robertson, S., & Woods, C. T. (2021). An ecological insight into the design and integration of attacking principles of play in professional rugby union: a case example. International Sport Coaching Journal, 8(3), 394-399.

🚀 Article in 3 Sentences

1. This article provides a case study on integrating ecological dynamics into attacking principles for Rugby Union, specifically with the Queensland Reds.
2. It discusses how the coaching team designed training tasks that allowed players to explore and adapt their actions within structured game principles, fostering creativity and adaptability.
3. The article then explores how the concepts were brought to life through case examples

🤝Impressions

I thought this was a really interesting paper that explored an often under discussed area ‘principles of play’. The case examples also added hugely to the paper and provided lots of food for thought.

👨‍🏫Who should read this?

🎾How Article will influence my coaching

• Tactical game 'models' that are typical in high-performance sport 'playbooks' can have an indirect effect of over-constraining the actions of athletes too much which goes against the foundations of Ecological Dynamics. Their strict and planned way of doing things can ignore how the (task, performer, and environment) constraints effect skilled actions, which can then hinder performance.
• The search for information on how the best achieve the intended task outcome becomes the goal of practice
• Viewing the game through an ecological lens means that principles guide the search rather than prescribe behaviours to the players.
• Here, ‘constrained variation’ refers to practice designs where constraints are deliberately manipulated to simulate the competitive performance environment.
• simplifying a full game, but still faithfully preserving fundamental information sources that shape player actions=nice way to think about slices of the game

📃Takeaways for coaches

• developing and implementing a set of attacking principles can give players the chance to explore and capitalise on their actions in practice and performance.
• This means that the coach must help the athlete build their relationship with their environment by guiding their attention to important parts of the environment. To do this, the coach should create practice tasks that tell the athlete where to look, but not what to see
• As coaches we can use the CLA to guide players attention rather than the use of constant and prescriptive verbal instructions
• Coaches can use game principles to help athletes in high performance sports, instead of making them follow strict rules. These principles will guide the athletes' focus, while not over constraining their options.