Matt Williams: Alexander the Great offers an important lesson for rugby coaches

In the 1991 Rugby World Cup semi-final between New Zealand and the Wallabies, David Campese delivered the greatest pass I have ever witnessed.

Campese looked left, stepped left, dummied left. Every indication to the defence was he was going left; then, with extraordinary skill and daring, he delivered a "no look" pass to his right by popping the ball up and over his right shoulder into the safe hands of Tim Horan, one of Australia's greatest centres, who dashed away to score in front of the world's disbelieving eyes.

Luck played no part in that act of genius. Campese had performed that pass countless times before in games of touch, training sessions and club games. His brain was hard-wired to make the correct decision on when to use that audacious pass.

Campese’s concept of enhancing his decision-making through training is not new. One of the earliest experiments in “high performance cognitive training” was in 343 BC, when King Philip II of Macedon appointed the renowned Athenian teacher Aristotle to tutor his son Alexander.

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Alexander became “the Great” because he was able to repeatedly make brilliant strategic military decisions while under unimaginable pressure.

The question is: did Alexander, Campese and other great decision-makers win the genetic lottery and be born with innate cognitive gifts? Or were their decision-making abilities enhanced through excellent teaching to improve what nature had provided?

Alexander had little doubt when he said: “I am indebted to my father for living, but to my teacher for living well.”

Source of fascination

For more than 2,500 years the devotees of military training have been fascinated as to how Alexander made so many excellent decisions under the great pressures of battle.

Rugby as a team sport was conceived as part of that great question. In the 1800s, the English public school system was charged with providing the world’s largest empire since Alexander’s with its future military leaders.

Rugby was designed to simulate 19th-century warfare, so the “officer class” could practice making time-constrained decisions under the pressures of physical contact.

Young players need environments where they can push the limits of their skills and decision-making to the point of failure

The wisdom of those teachers at Rugby School who empowered teenagers to grow as decision-makers by making on-field calls has been reinforced in a fabulous book titled The Playmaker's Decisions: The Science of Clutch Plays, Mental Mistakes and Athlete Cognition. Authors Dr Leonard Zaichkowsky, one of the world's leading sports performance psychologists, from Boston University, and Dan Peterson provide practical tools for coaches, parents and especially players to enhance the process of making quality decisions under the pressure of time.

They suggest that the science tells us that the quality “playmakers” are born with “hardware” in their cognitive make-up that enhances their capacity for making good decisions under pressure.

The exciting news is that research into the cognitive science of how to become a better “playmaker” is rapidly expanding. That means that “software”, ie strategies, is available to enhance players’ decision-making ability.

The authors’ research tells us what the bygone educators at Rugby School already knew. Players learn to make decisions by making both good and bad choices.

Pushing limits

Young players need environments where they can push the limits of their skills and decision-making to the point of failure without being harshly criticised by their coaches or parents. Errors are part of the learning process.

Criticism can create fear in players’ minds which will inhibit their ability to make time-pressured decisions.

Players: remember that you will constantly learn from the game. The great teacher keeps handing out lessons to us all

The authors argue that when commentators, like me, say that “players used their instincts”, they are factually wrong. (Mea culpa.) Animals have instincts, humans don’t. What we see from great playmakers in those “clutch plays” are them processing learned behaviours from hundreds of hours of past experiences in games, practice sessions and play. All performed at lightning speed.

Currently, many coaches have burdened our athletes with endless so-called “skill drills”, hoping that somehow the ability to make high-quality decisions will emerge from under the clutter.

However, a few of rugby’s leading coaches are ahead of the game in this area.

In every session of his coaching, Scott Wisemantel, the current Wallaby attack coach, provides time to empower his players to push their decision-making ability and skills to the point of failure. He calls this their "challenge point". The players receive no criticism for errors, but they are challenged on how they can improve in the future.

If repetition is the mother of all learning, then every coach should place a “Wisemantel challenge point” into their sessions.

New year’s resolutions

Here is my suggestion for some rugby new year’s resolutions.

Parents: let’s talk positively with all kids. Learning to make decisions in sport is hard. Your kids need leadership, wisdom, humour, support and love.

They don’t need a “bollocking” for making a wrong decision. They need to learn, and errors are a natural consequence of that process.

Coaches: rugby, with its myriad complexities, remains “the great teacher”. At practice sessions play “learning games” that manipulate the players’ environment and force them to make decisions. It might be 7 vs 4 games of touch on a reduced-size playing area. Here, the attack has the advantage, so both attack and defence are forced into a constant flow of decisions. Your players will learn and love the process.

Players: remember that you will constantly learn from the game. The great teacher keeps handing out lessons to us all. You will never master the game, but you can enjoy it. Have fun on the journey.

2021 feels better already.