Page 4 - GRFC_News_Summer_15

04
Gwernyfed RFC’s Head Coach Chay Billen
offers his thoughts on the season and looks forward to the new one...
GWERNYFED RFC
FROM THE TOP...
I would like to open this end of season report by thanking our club Chairman and Senior rugby Chairman, Messrs Rob Stephens and Des Parry respectively. These are two men who I have a high regard for in terms of their rugby ‘nouse’ and the way they have moved the club forward in recent years. I know there are potentially hundreds more of you out there reading this that have also moved the club forward in different ways, but when I met with Rob and Des last summer, it was soon clear that all three of us had the same vision for the Club, allied to the same moral and ethical values.
These factors are fundamental to a successful management team and I took no persuasion in accepting the coaching post within a few minutes of talking to them both. So Rob, Des, thank you both for initially involving me and for your continued support, it really is appreciated.
The first part of the season was disappointing in terms of results, but not in terms of the overall development of the side. Like all coaches, we would all like more time to work with players but the reality was that the priority in the first few months was focussed on embedding patterns of play rather than conditioning and this does partially explain our slow start. The Autumn Internationals gave us much needed free weekends from playing, so we used this time to prioritise our conditioning work and thus, the weekly slogs up the hospital pitch began.
Obviously there were physiological benefits that were gained during that month, but of more importance to us were the psychological changes that occurred in most of the players. As an Ex-Steelman, it became apparent to me that most of the players who attended these weekly sessions soon developed that ‘mental steel’ or toughness that comes from pushing yourself to the limits regularly and this served us well for the remainder of the season.
When appropriate we adopted Steve Harley’s policy of blooding youngsters for the senior XV and this still remains a strong feature of the coaches philosophy and the resulting selection process. There was no better example of this than at Clwb Rygbi Cymru Caerdydd who were second in the league at that time. Several youth players stepped up to the plate and slotted into the team and played looking more like seasoned veterans rather than nervous, spotty teenagers. The emphasis, crucially, has to be on appropriate timing as these players will form the spine of future squads as we progress into the 6th decade of the Club’s existence.
Talking of the spine of the squads, I wish to congratulate and thank Danny Skyrme for his work over the season both on and off the field. Danny, as we all know, played with his heart on his sleeve and his coaching is no different as the players witnessed after a poor first half display against Pontyclun. Enough said on that one, but on a serious note, I see Danny moving into the head coach’s position in the
not too distant future and I hope I can be there to assist him with any support he may need. Not everything had been positive last season, so there is no point in pretending that it was. Our away form was very sporadic, which from a coaching perspective is extremely frustrating as we are constantly looking at methods of combatting this. The pitch is always green and usually the same size wherever we play. The ball is always ‘egg shaped’ so the physical environment remains fairly constant but the psychological dynamic changes and this is an area we will be focussing a lot of work over the pre-season. It would mean more to me as a coach if we regularly travelled to the top sides in the Rhondda and beat them rather than an away victory over our nearest neighbours.
My last set of thanks go to all of the players who played out of position and just got on with the job, having been asked to perform to the best of their abilities.
I understand their frustrations when asked to perform these roles and they can often feel undervalued at being asked to play out of position. Let me just clarify that clubs like ours are built on players, supporters and committee members who all ‘muck in’ together when duty calls. So a huge thank you to all players who were asked to play out of position this season, it is appreciated by all and in no way should you feel undervalued, in fact, quite the opposite is true in my mind. Planning for the 2015/16 campaign is already underway and the club have demonstrated
GRFC News