The Rugby Coach's Corner Podcast

Stuart Armstrong is the Player Pathways Manager for the RFU. We discuss his background, role with the RFU, talent ID vs talent development, player retention, the obsession with size in talent ID and more. For some great information on developing athletes, Check out Stuart's blog, The Talent Equation.

Jack Hanratty, from Leinster to Nova Scotia. Jack discusses his journey from Ireland to Canada, questioning techniques of his athletes, games-based philosophy and working with scrum halves.

This episode is a brief introduction by myself regarding the goal of the podcast. I discuss my background, coaching history and how I'm hoping to see the show develop over time. Thanks for listening!

Tom Farrow is a performance coach and rugby combat consultant. He is the owner of Areté Performance (http://www.arete-performance.com/), a sports performance and personal training company based in London. Tom worked for Wasps RFC for the past 3 years as a strength and conditioning coach, both with their senior team and more recently with the academy. Tom has also consulted as a combat coach (applying wrestling techniques to rugby) for Wasps, England Sevens and England Women’s rugby, as well as various other clubs and schools in London and the surrounding Home Counties. Tom has recently taken on a position with Speedworks as a Performance Coach, working under renowned sprint specialist Jonas Dodoo. Speedworks oversee the training of some of the country’s fastest sprinters as well as World and Olympic champion long jumper Greg Rutherford. Tom has also recently been appointed the UK Director of the International Strength and Conditioning Institute, a newly born, educational association that promotes sensible, evidence based sport training methodology as well as bridges the gap between science and practice.

Gavin Hickie is the Head Coach of Dartmouth Rugby in New Hampshire, USA, and is also the current Collegiate All Americans Head Coach as well.He’s a former professional player who has had stints with Leinster, London Irish, Worcester Warriors & Leicester Tigers, and has also played for Ireland at various levels, including 7s. He is the co-creator of the website LineoutCoach.com and is also an author for the very first time, with his new book titled: Rugby Revealed

Mark Upton, originally from Adelaide in South Australia, took up his position as the Coaching Science Manager at the English Institute of Sport early in 2014, after 12 years working in coaching and sport science at a professional Australian Rules Football Club.In his current role, Mark works closely with UK Sport's world-class coach development programmes and has a brief to help coaches optimise their practice & learning environments in regards to decision making, performing under pressure, technical change and developing problem-solving athletes. Mark is also a co-creator of myfastestmile, a social enterprise designed to help people be their best by encouraging organisations to create functional coaching systems and dynamic learning environments