Rugby & Leadership

The sport is cemented in respect. Your personal safety and the safety of everyone around you requires it. You respect the person across from you on the field.

The physicality, conditioning, contact, mental acuity and time demands respect.

Unlike most American sports where, even when playing as a team, individuals stand out and a single person can carry a team. This is extraordinarily difficult in rugby. Understand, a single person's effort can make or break a game, but it is different in that scoring on one's own or being able to make most of the team's tackles is nigh impossible.

The best players are the ones that know how to integrate their talents with their team mates.

When I began playing, I was really shocked at how much depth there is. At the surface it feels like it's passing the ball backwards and tackling the other guy when they have the ball.

But there is an incredible depth in offensive formations, defensive formations, strategies on how to take advantage of a slower player or avoid a powerful tackler. Is the other teams' scrum particularly strong? Is their full back a precise kicker? How quick are their wings? Are their centers breaking tackles? How often are the 2nd rows pulling and running with the backs? Fastball? Static defense?

There are dozens of things to think about and unlike American football, you have to consider these things without a 45 second pause between plays. For 80 minutes, you have to think, constantly assess your place on the field, your team mates' positions, and the opponents' positions.

Rugby is team chess with running, passing, tackling, and kicking.

Every sport has players that are talented. What everyone forgets is that hustle amplifies talent. Are you fast? Then make sure you also have deep conditioning so you can use that speed for 80 minutes. Excellent hands? Then make sure you are moving and positioning yourself into a position to receive a pass and press the offense. Excellent tackler? Then learn how offense works so you can properly attack your opponent and stop their advance.

Hustling amplifies your talents.

Strength takes many forms: pure muscle, endurance on the field, mental fortitude to continue strategizing when you're in the 60th minute of the game. Everyone has different strengths. Learn yours and how to lean on others to create something powerful.

Find your strength. Understand others' strength.

You can't have 15 people on a field without communicating. Learn to listen. Process what others are seeing and telling you. Listen with your eyes, your ears, and with your body. People communicate through glances, eyebrows, a tap on an elbow, a clap, or with their voice. The better you can communicate in all the channels, the better you can attack or defend without alerting your opponents.

Listen with your ears, your eyes, and your body.

While you're listening you have to be responding, directing, informing. Passing information along or observations you've made. At the very least you have to let someone know you are with them, ready for the pass, or beside them, ready to make the tackle. Slide left, slide right, punt the ball, I'm catching the ball, watch out for the flanker crashing, there's a thousand things to communicate. Build your vocabulary verbally and with your body language.

Tell your team mates how you are helping them and how to help you.