Module 5

The impact of Game Sense pedagogy on Australian rugby coaches’ practice: a question of pedagogy

Richard Lawrence Lighta� and John Evans Robertb

aCarnegie Research Institute, Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds, UK; bFaculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney, NSW, Sydney, Australia

(Received 11 December 2007; final version received 23 December 2008)

Background: Recent developments in games and sport teaching such as that of Teaching Games for Understanding, Play Practice and Game Sense suggest that they can make a significant contribution toward the development of tactical understanding, ability to read the game, decision-making and a general ‘sense of the game’, yet empirical research conducted on their application in sport coaching lags behind research on their application in physical education. This article redresses this oversight by drawing on a study that inquired into the impact that Game Sense has had on elite-level rugby coaches in Australia. Aims: The purpose of the study was to inquire into the ways in which elite-level rugby coaches interpret and used the Game Sense approach to coaching and to explore the reasons for this. Method: This study comprises four case studies on Australian rugby coaches who were working, or had worked at, provincial and/or national levels. Data were generated through noted observations and a series of extended, semi-structured interviews conducted over a four-month period. A constant-comparative approach used in grounded theory was employed to analyse the data from the interviews. The analysis involved identification of themes and ideas and the development of substantive theory that was tested in subsequent interviews and connected to formal theory later in the analytic process. Results: The coaches in this study value games-based training using them to: (1) test skills in game-like situations; (2) develop decision-making and aspects of a ‘sense of the game’ through implicit learning that cannot be directly taught to players; and (3) develop match- specific fitness. However, Games Sense pedagogy has had a relatively limited influence on their coaching, with none of them familiar with either Game Sense pedagogy or the concept of pedagogy in general. Conclusion: This study suggests that while elite-level rugby coaches in Australia value games as part of their training, the distinctive, player-centred, Game Sense pedagogy has had little impact upon rugby coaching. This suggests that implementing significant change in coaches’ pedagogical practice, such as that required for implementing a Game Sense approach, is not an easy task. A lack of attention to pedagogy in Australian rugby coach education programmes seems to have limited the impact of Game Sense on rugby coaching in Australia and is an area in need of attention in both coach education and the coaching literature.

Keywords: Game Sense; rugby; coaches; Australia

ISSN 1740-8989 print/ISSN 1742-5786 online

# 2010 Association for Physical Education DOI: 10.1080/17408980902729388

http://www.informaworld.com

�Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]

Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy Vol. 15, No. 2, April 2010, 103–115

Introduction

The past 6–7 years have seen the emergence of writing that challenges a view of coaching as a simple process of knowledge transmission from coach to players (Cassidy, Jones, and Potrac 2004; Jones 2006; Kidman 2005; Light 2004). This developing perspective on coaching draws on developments in pedagogy and learning theory in education and physical education to argue for a view of coaching as a complex, situated social process (Cassidy, Jones, and Potrac 2004; Jones 2006). As part of this emergent perspective on coaching, researchers have suggested the application of student-centred approaches. Approaches such as Teaching Games for Understanding (TGfU), Play Practice and Game Sense can make a significant contribution toward the development of specific areas of play such as tactical understanding, reading the game, decision-making, player independence and a general ‘sense of the game’ (see, for example, Launder and Piltz (2006) and Light (2004)). This development offers an ‘extremely powerful point of connec- tion between teaching and coaching and, physical education and sport’ (Penney 2006, 34). The research that has been conducted on athlete/player-centred approaches to coaching suggests that it provides a range of opportunities for coaching, yet, as is the case with research on physical education teachers, there are a number of problems involved with its implementation (Kidman 2001; Light 2004). A number of studies conducted over the past decade in physical education have focused on teachers’ and pre-service teachers’ responses to TGfU and its variations, and their experiences of implementing them across a range of cultural settings (Butler 1996; Light 2002; Liu 2004; Tan et al. 2002), yet little empirical research has been conducted on the application of these approaches to sport coaching in either youth sport or elite sport settings.

To redress this oversight in the literature this paper draws on a close-focus study con- ducted on the impact of Game Sense on the practices of four Australian rugby coaches. The study inquired into the extent to which Game Sense had impacted upon practice in elite-level rugby coaching by focusing on four rugby coaches working at elite levels in the provinces of New South Wales (NSW) and the Australian Capital Territory (ACT), Australia over a four-month period from July to October 2005.

New perspectives on coaching

Traditional views of coaching as being focused on the development of athlete competence and skill reflect an overly simple conception of learning as the transmission of objectified knowledge from coach to player/athlete that places limits on athlete and coach interaction (Cassidy, Jones, and Potrac 2004; Culver and Trudel 2008). This promotes the idea of a monologue from coach to players instead of the interaction and dialogue that athlete- centred approaches such as Game Sense advocate (Light and Wallian 2008). Indeed, inter- action between players and between players and the coach is central to Game Sense and other similar approaches that have been explained from a constructivist perspective on learning (Light and Fawns 2003; Wright and Forrest 2007). Athlete-centred approaches to coaching such as Game Sense are based on the assumption that rather than being a passive sponge soaking up knowledge, the athlete is a thinking, feeling and physical being that interprets and makes sense of learning experiences shaped by the knowledge and inclinations that he/she brings to the learning experience.

Drawing on Mosston and Ashworth’s (1986) idea of a spectrum of teaching styles, Cassidy, Jones, and Potrac (2004) draw overdue attention to pedagogy in coaching by suggesting that the five teaching styles of Command, Task, Reciprocal, Guided Discovery

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and Problem Solving can be applied to coaching. They suggest that coaching should seek to do more than just transmit knowledge, arguing that it should seek to develop athletes as independent problem solvers, making them less reliant upon the coach. The stress on problem solving in Game Sense would certainly place its ‘teaching style’ at the student- centred end of Mosston and Ashworth’s spectrum. The Game Sense coach designs the learning environment within which the players will learn through interaction and experience within activities designed to provide opportunities for specific learning. Whether the focus is on skill development, tactical learning, reading the games or decision-making the coach focuses on designing the environment and facilitating players’ learning through player- centred, problem-solving pedagogy.

Game sense

The Game Sense approach was developed in Australia during the 1990s through collabor- ation between Rod Thorpe, the Australian Sports Commission (ASC) and Australian coaches (Light 2004). In Game Sense coaching learners are seen as beings with previous knowledge and experiences that shape how and what they learn. Viewing Game Sense from a social constructivist perspective emphasises the central role of social interaction in learning to highlight it as a social process (Gréhaigne, Richard, and Griffin 2005; Light and Fawns 2003; Wallian and Chang 2007; Wright and Forrest 2007). This means that coaches, like teachers, need to understand, or at least consider, the experiences of the player/athlete, the knowledge he/she brings to training, and the physical and social environment to accommodate meaningful change (learning). As Dewey (1916/1997) suggests, rather than direct instruction the teacher’s job is to facilitate learning by designing the learning environment, using questioning and providing opportunities for interaction. Most of the work on coaching as a social process has been done by researchers who have drawn on recent developments in education and physical education pedagogy that apply contemporary learning theory to teaching. This work suggests that learning to play sport involves far more than the refinement of de-contextualised technique and the intern- alisation of objective knowledge. It suggests that learning to play sport (and learning to coach) is essentially a social activity and a far more complex process than traditional direc- tive approaches seem to assume. Dominant approaches to coaching and teaching are based upon a belief in learning as a linear process in which players learn by adding on knowledge or skills (Light 2008). Such assumptions about learning are not necessarily articulated, but instead operate at a powerful non-conscious level where they are rarely questioned, yet structure coaches’ and teachers’ actions (Davis and Sumara 2003). Contemporary learning theory sees learning as a transformative process that actively engages the learner as an active participant in the process. While not always stated as such, this conception of learning is evident in some of the more recent coaching literature that has picked up on player-centred coaching (for example, see Kidman 2001, 2005; Light 2004).

Coaching and pedagogy

There has been considerable interest shown in TGfU and variations such as Game Sense and Play Practice from practitioners in the sport-coaching field (Light 2004). The New Zealand national rugby team, the All Blacks, successfully adopted a game-based approach informed by Game Sense (Kidman 2001). Many sports organisations in Australia also lay claim to the use of Game Sense, yet a cursory examination of websites suggests that what is labelled as Game Sense typically varies significantly from the systematic approach

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developed by Rod Thorpe and the ASC during the mid-1990s (den Duyn 1997). For example, clicking on the heading ‘Game Sense’ on the website of the NSW rugby team, the Waratahs, reveals only descriptions of a range of games with no indication of how they might be used and no mention of pedagogy. Light (2006a) argues that while the use of games for training is nothing new for many coaches, Game Sense pedagogy, although innovative, receives little attention from coaches or coach educators. Indeed, with the exception of some recent attention (Jones 2006; Cassidy, Jones, and Potrac 2004), this lack of interest in pedagogy is evident across the coaching field where the process of learn- ing is typically seen as being linear and non-problematic.

As Woodman (1993) suggests, sport coaching tends to concentrate on athletic achieve- ment at the expense of pedagogy in coach education programmes where the process of learning seems to be seen as a simple process of knowledge transmission. Recent research and writing on coaching from a socio-cultural perspective has, however, begun to challenge a dominant view of learning as a simple linear process and of coaching as scientific process (for example, see Cassidy, Jones, and Potrac 2004). Very recently, writing in the physical education field has begun to draw on contemporary thinking about learning to highlight the complex nature of learning and the need for pedagogical approaches to recognise and account for this (see, for example, Light 2008) and this is equally relevant for sport coaching as for physical education. By pedagogy we refer to more than the limiting ideas of a science or art of teaching to adopt a more inclusive notion of pedagogy as being: ‘any conscious activity by one person designed to enhance learning in another’ (Watkins and Mortimer 1999, 3). While in this paper we are concerned with this intended learning, we recognise the range of unintended, implicit learning that occurs as part of day-to-day social life as identified in the learning theory of Lave and Wenger (1991) and the social theory of Bourdieu (1986).

Research methodology

This paper draws on four case studies on Australian rugby coaches conducted in 2005. The participants in the study were purposefully sampled and all were employed as professional rugby coaches who were working, or had worked at, provincial or national levels. The study inquired into the extent to which Game Sense had impacted upon practice in elite-level rugby coaching. It focused on four rugby coaches working at elite levels in the provinces of NSW and the ACT, Australia. The four case studies used a series of interviews conducted over a four-month period from July to October 2005 by the second author. An interpretive method- ology was adopted to provide insight and make sense of coaching as a social process and the ways in which the coaches involved interpreted and used Game Sense. In an attempt to situate the findings within the socio-cultural context within which coaches work, it locates their use of Game Sense within the high-pressure environment of elite-level coaching.

Data generation

Data were generated through a series of one on one, semi-structured interviews guided by the following core research question: To what extent has Game Sense influenced the practices of elite-level rugby coaches and how is this shaped by the socio-cultural environ- ment of elite rugby coaching? The interviews were conducted by the second author with initial interviews of 1 hour’s duration followed up with two subsequent interviews of approximately 40 minutes duration each.

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Analysis

The themes were coded manually from the transcribed interviews. A constant-comparative approach used in grounded theory as outlined by Glaser and Strauss (1967) was employed to analyse the data from the interviews. The analysis involved identification of themes and ideas that emerged from each of the three rounds of interviews and related observations leading to the development of substantive theories that were tested in subsequent rounds of interviews and connected to formal theory in the later stages of the research.

The coaches

Pseudonyms have been used for each of the participants in the study to protect their anon- ymity and each of them is briefly described below.

Barry was 65 at the time of the study and was a previous national, state and first- division rugby coach. He had been a participant in the national coach education programme and was a level-3 coach with the Australian Rugby Union (ARU). He had a background in engineering and had in recent times been responsible for a state rugby academy. He had a passion for the game and was very enthusiastic about participating in the study. In 2005 Barry was a coaching consultant to one of the major rugby provinces in Australia and had coached professionally for over 10 years.

Billy was 42 at the time of the study, had been a school teacher and after retiring from playing rugby five years prior to the study, moved into coaching. He had been a participant in the national coach education programme and was a level-3 coach with the ARU. He had moved into a position with the NSW rugby team after being an academy coach and after a successful career coaching first division rugby. In 2005 he had been coaching professionally for five years.

Jack was 36 and had a career as a tradesman with a successful building business before completing a sports coaching qualification at a tertiary level and moving into coaching. He had been a participant in the national coach education programme and was a level-3 coach with the ARU. He played rugby at state and national levels before moving into coaching. Jack coached a first division team before taking up an appointment with a state-based academy and had coached professionally for five years at the time of the study.

Simon was 30 at the time of the study with a degree in human movement and held a coaching position with the national team. He achieved this after a long playing career at club level and coaching stints overseas in Japan and France. He was a successful Australian Institute of Sport Scholarship coach while still playing rugby and had coached profession- ally for six years.

Results

The following section presents and discusses the ways in which the coaches used games and Game Sense in their coaching and the influence that their coaching environment had on this.

The four coaches tended to use games in three main ways: (a) to test skills and set plays; (b) to develop independence, perception and decision-making ability; and (c) to develop game-specific fitness.

Testing skills

While the Game Sense approach is underpinned by a conception of skills and understanding developing at the same time the coaches in this study tended to see modified games as a

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means of testing skill after it had been practised and refined to an appropriate level. They tended to follow a progression that involved them identifying a technique that needed working on and beginning by having the players work on it in isolation from the game. They would then have players practise technique under increasing pressure in an open environment. This was typically followed by the skill, technique or structured play being tested in a modified game and in conditions that were similar to a match. Simon explained his use of games in training to develop and test skills:

We use games – games are probably the litmus test of their (the players) transition between block skills into whether they can actually apply those block skills (in the real game). I think it means that players have to read cues. So, they start to become programmed to cues that you can’t actually teach inside a block or a blocked drill. (Interview 2, 24 August 2005)

Simon recognised the capacity of games to help players learn to read cues through having them engage with the physical learning environment and sought to place players progress- ively in a more game-like environment, but felt that learning needed to begin with direct instruction outside a game situation. Billy, Jack and Simon all made a clear distinction between the ideas of structured and unstructured play in rugby matches and the need to tailor training accordingly, with training divided into structured and unstructured activities. For these three coaches game-based training was best used for those activities where coaches thought players had already developed their skill level to a point where it could be used in aspects of rugby play that were unstructured, as Jack explained:

It depends on the level of the player. For a player with a poor skill level it (the use of games) would be more structured and a player with an independent skill level which – he’s got good high quality skills you’re looking at more decision based training, in which case you would have less structured training. (Interview 2, 2 September 2005)

While set plays (first phase) such as scrums and lineouts are typically very structured in rugby the second phase of play (referred to by the four coaches as ‘phase play’) is less pre- dictable, more fluid and more dynamic. In this environment it is more important for players to be adaptable and be able to make tactically appropriate decisions. However, even in second-phase play, the coaches in this study sought to provide as much structure as poss- ible, reducing options and the need for player decision-making. Simon recognised the need for player decision-making during phase play, yet suggested the extent to which he felt it needed to be structured:

So, another really good example is phase play options, you know, that’s a very open skill to be able to call a phase play option on the run and then execute that play with the correct running lines, with the correct ball transfer, all those types of things. So, obviously you’ve got to have some structure to that so you actually get the play down pat and you know what’s expected and then you have to apply it in an unstructured situation. (Interview 2, 24 August 2005)

Such responses indicate particular interpretations of Game Sense and the place of games in training shaped by a highly structured view of coaching and a focus on the development of high levels of skill performance. In general, Billy, Jack and Simon sought to reduce the need for players to anticipate, make decisions and be creative by designing and having the players learn structures to be implemented within the less predictable aspects of games.

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Developing independence, perception and decision-making

Some of the strengths of Game Sense identified in research include the ways in which it can develop player independence on the field, perceptual powers and decision-making ability (Kidman 2001; Light 2004). The coaches in this study recognised the extent to which game-based training can develop these qualities to different degrees, but Barry stressed the need for these qualities more than the others. His approach to coaching aligned better with Game Sense pedagogy. His frequent references to intuition and the need to develop embodied responses to cues in games suggested that he had a view of coaching and learning that was different to the others, who favoured more structure in their coaching and in the game style of the teams they coached. He bemoaned the reduction of opportunities for young players to learn through ‘knock up’, informal games and hinted at the non-conscious learning that takes place through playing games. He felt that players needed to develop a sense of the game by playing games to develop an understanding that bypassed conscious thinking. In terms of the role Game Sense plays in this learning, Barry saw this as a way to improve what he referred to as players’ reactions or instincts:

So, by playing games, especially training games, where the result is not terribly important, people can play with an open mind and I think that’s a really important thing. I think that – I don’t know if everyone understands the same thing I’m thinking of when I say open mind, but you have to play with your mind vacant. You have to play with your conscious mind vacant to enable information to rocket through it quickly and transfer to action. (Interview 1, 28 July 2005)

In this quote Barry seemed to refer to the implicit, embodied learning that Light and Fawns (2003) suggest occurs through TGfU. His notion of playing with an open mind implies a lack of structure and a degree of trust in the players’ ability to respond to cues and the dynamics of games appropriately. It also brings to mind the trust placed in players by the new national coach, Robby Deans, and his stress on having them play what is in front of them.

Barry suggested that players’ independence on the field is an essential quality for performance at elite levels and that they should train in ways that allow them to develop this independence:

We must have player independence, the player must be able to apply his skill in reading designs, being aware of the spaces, being aware of the opportunities and people must be able to take advantage of that. (Interview 2, 25 August 2005)

He emphasised player autonomy, risk-taking and the need for players to think and make instant decisions within a constantly changing physical environment. Players in any team sport constantly have to: ‘make sense of the chaotic, ebb and flow of display action that unfolds during the game’ (Piltz 2004, 79) by reading the game as the pages turn and Barry seemed attuned to this requirement for rugby players. He identified games-based training as the best way to develop this on the field:

You can certainly develop independence through the use of games which is what I would do – is make them aware of that through a structured mock game or structured game and then say, righto, this is our play from here. (Interview 2, 25 August 2005)

Billy also saw the importance of implicit learning through games for improving decision- making and perception but conceived of this more in the vein of embedding pre-determined responses and patterns within dynamic physical contexts: ‘It’s repetitious practice that

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becomes embedded in their subconscious and then they become subconsciously competent without fear’. Although the others identified the need for players to respond to cues in games they were less inclined than Barry to hand over decision-making responsibility to the players. Simon suggested that the learning environment of games-based training pro- vides opportunities or stimuli that are not present in other forms of training but was less inclined to identify games-based training as a way of developing player independence than Barry: ‘I think it means that players have to read cues. So, they start to become pro- grammed to cues that you can’t actually teach inside a block or a blocked drill’. Here Simon identified the opportunities that Game Sense offers for players to develop perception and respond to cues in ways that can’t be directly taught but was still reluctant to let go of a tightly structured approach to coaching. On the other hand, Barry encouraged player risk-taking, creativity and responsibility in responding to game cues, while the others wanted to programme players in their responses to cues.

Simon recognised the importance of perception in picking up cues and the ways in which the training environment needs to be close to that of the match and suggested how aspects of rugby cannot be ‘taught’ but, instead, need to be learnt through games. Although his primary use of games and game-like contexts was to test skills or predeter- mined plays, interviews suggested an awareness of the need to adapt to the dynamic and fluid context of games by picking up cues. He also recognised the value of the implicit learning that occurs through playing games and the use of games to develop aspects of play that cannot be directly ‘taught’:

The other one (use of games training) is for implicit learning. So, rather than being told the whole time they actually – with implicit learning they actually work things out for themselves and they work that out through best performance. (Interview 2, 24 August 2005)

Questioning is seen as a central part of the Game Sense as a player-centred approach and is a key strategy for developing player independence (Light 2004), but all four of the coaches in this study felt that questioning was something that was done at the completion of the task or game and not part of the learning process. They did, however, see questioning as a positive approach, an opportunity for developing clarity and a chance to discuss options. Billy’s response was typical of the coaches’ positions on questioning:

Probably if they make a mistake, rather than tell them what the mistake is generally to go through a questioning type situation to see if they can actually come up with the answer without belittling them. (Interview 2, 25 August 2005)

Here Billy’s response suggested some support for the use of questioning in Game Sense but he did not see it as an important part of his coaching practice.

Developing match-specific fitness

All four of the coaches in this study also used game-based coaching to develop game- specific fitness because they felt that games replicated the physiological demands of matches. They saw the development of match-specific fitness as one of the benefits of games-based training as Barry made clear:

I think there has to be a connection between practice and fitness. If there’s not we’ve got to devote more time. Now, for the best use and the most efficient use of time, we should do it, and I know we can do it; from experience; therefore you must do it. Now, I find that game

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playing is a fantastic way to get fitness if you ensure that the rules of the game command it. (Interview 2, 25 August 2005)

In his second interview Simon made a similar statement regarding the contribution that games training could make toward fitness. In response to a question asking whether or not he felt games were useful for developing fitness he said: ‘Yes, definitely because you get an over compensation effect, as long as you’re playing faster than the actual game is usually played’.

The coaching environment

As one of the last major team sports to abandon the ideal of amateurism, rugby has under- gone profound change over the past decade or so since embracing of professionalism from 1995 (Ryan 2008). It is now a professional sport in which coaches are paid full-time pro- fessionals who can aspire to financially rewarding careers. There are also enormous finan- cial consequences hinging upon the results of many matches and resultant expectations on elite-level coaches to win (Kayes 2007; Jenkins 2006). As Light (2004) suggests, this can operate to discourage coaches from experimenting with innovation such as Game Sense. Billy said that there was no place for the luxury of having a coaching ‘philosophy’ in an environment where there is no guarantee of tenure and coaches have to be pragmatic. He felt it was important to work with the players that are available for the coach and adapt coach- ing to suit their particular capacities rather than have a pre-determined ‘philosophy’ such as that which he saw as underpinning Game Sense. This approach seems to be common in professional rugby where, as Billy explained, there is an emphasis on performance and limited time to develop players:

To me you coach the people. You don’t plant yourself up there and say this is the way I play football. I mean, in some situations you can then contract players who will play that way or you can develop players over time and that’s obviously – in a long term situation you can do that, but most coaching jobs these days aren’t long term enough to just have a philosophy and say you’ll fit it all, bad luck, you must be adaptive. (Interview 1, 30 June 2005)

While a coach in an Australian Institute of Sport development team might have time to develop players, any national team is under pressure for results. The views of the coaches in this study suggest that such an environment might not be conducive to the more holistic and humanistic nature of Game Sense. As research on TGfU and Game Sense suggests, it takes time to develop understanding as knowledge-in-action and is not easy to quantify. There is a problem with such approaches not fitting in with clear percep- tions created by the new professionalism of rugby of players as a human resource that needs to be cultivated and ‘maximised’ where time is precious. This can operate against the adoption of a Game Sense approach as Jack suggested:

Even though we have professional players we only have a limited time to coach them. The game is very technical now and to ask questions (of players) all the time may reduce the real time we can coach. (Interview 3, 21 October 2005)

While this quote confirms the perceived lack of time available for these coaches it also reflects Jack’s view that the core concern of coaching at elite levels is with teaching players the technical aspects of rugby and that, even though questioning has something to offer, this is done more efficiently with direct instruction. Although he agreed that

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coaches were under great pressure to achieve results, Barry was more positively disposed toward indirect coaching through games. Indeed, he was openly critical of what he saw as an overemphasis on direct instruction:

I think one of the giant mistakes about coaching is that we have to teach people how to play rugby and I’m sure that people teach themselves how to play rugby. I’m sure that you learn how to play rugby by playing and you make mistakes and you recognise the mistakes and you get better at it and the general feel for the game is developed by actually playing. (Interview 1, 28 July 2005)

With the national team, the Wallabies, having an exceptionally poor year in 2005 similar criticisms emerged in the print media (Kimber 2005). In a media interview with Sydney Premiership-winning Sydney University’s coach, Steven Surridge, he hinted at a de- humanisation of elite training while suggesting its limitation in the preparation of complete, thinking athletes:

Basically the obsession with training squads and academies is, I think, actually weakening Australian Rugby, Surridge said. ‘One of the main problems with Australian rugby is that they believe the training can improve player’s performance on field’, and that is true to a certain extent, but there’s nothing that will ever replace a game situation. (Kimber 2005)

Discussion

The coaches in this study used games and valued them as an important aspect of their train- ing. They also recognised the ways in which games can develop aspects of a ‘sense of the game’ through implicit learning that cannot be directly taught to players. In these ways they were using game-based coaching as a significant part of their training programmes, but Games Sense pedagogy seems to have had a relatively limited influence on their coaching. Instead they tended to adopt directive teaching approaches. Furthermore, none of them were familiar with either this specific pedagogy or the concept of pedagogy in general.

The resources for Game Sense developed and disseminated by the ASC are all under- pinned by a pedagogical approach that involves the use of modified games to achieve specific learning outcomes and the employment of questioning instead of direct instruction (den Duyn 1997). It involves a distinctive, player-centred pedagogy. However, when the coaches used the term Game Sense they were more often than not referring to the idea of having some sense of the game in a very broad way and not to its specific, player- centred pedagogy.

Of the four coaches in this study Barry’s ideas and beliefs about coaching aligned best with Game Sense pedagogy and the constructivist perspectives on learning that have been used to theorise it (Light 2004). He was easily the strongest proponent of games-based coaching and of players learning through, and within, games. He was also considerably older then the other coaches, who had developed their ideas about coaching during a period over which sport science knowledge had a strong influence on coaching practice and rugby coaching was already emerging as a professional career. He felt that he had learnt to play rugby through ‘knock up’ games and not through the influence of coaches:

. . . as young Australian boys we learnt our sport by playing our sport and we really didn’t have any such thing as coaches. We didn’t have any such thing as a field; we didn’t have a marked out field. We didn’t have any such things as sidelines or for the most part goal posts. We certainly didn’t have a referee and at times we didn’t even have a ball. (Interview 1, 28 July 2005)

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The others saw the value of games but tended to adopt a more directive and structured approach to coaching that suggested a view of it as a process of knowledge transmission. These three coaches used games as a significant part of their training regimes but did not use Game Sense pedagogy. Given the lack of attention paid to pedagogy in coach education programmes and by the major sport organisations in Australia this is not surprising (Dickson 2001).

Game Sense pedagogy repositions the coach and requires and develops more equal power relationships between coach and players than the directive approach. It involves the coach handing over responsibility and decision-making to the players in training and on the field, which is something that Billy, Jack and Simon were reluctant to do. They recognised the ways in which games-based training offered opportunities for developing perceptual powers, picking up cues and decision-making, but restricted player autonomy and choices by having players make responses that involved choosing from a finite set of options set by the coach. We suggest that this limiting of choice and reluctance to ‘let go’ is a case of not being willing to hand over decision-making power to the players. The repositioning of the coach or teacher taking up a Game Sense approach is one problem consistently identified in research in schools (Butler 1996). It has also been ident- ified as a challenge in coaching (Light 2004). Considering the pressure operating on these coaches for results in terms of their win/loss ratio this can also be seen as reluctance to shift the responsibility for results from the coach to the players.

The coaches’ reluctance to ‘let go’ must be considered within the context of the enormous pressures placed on elite-level coaches for week-by-week results. Few other professions place people under such intense, constant and public scrutiny. One has only to look at the history of coaches who have been in charge of losing All Blacks sides at the Rugby World Cup (up until Graham Henry’s re-appointment in 2007) to realise the lack of security of coaching at the top and the extent of relentless scrutiny that elite-level rugby coaches are subject to. Coaches are thus, understandably, reluctant to take risks or depart too far from the status quo of accepted coaching practice. They are also anxious about relinquishing control over the players and the structures they develop to limit players’ capacities to improvise and experiment. Over the course of this study the coaches made comments that suggested a considerable degree of agreement with the principles and methods of Game Sense but only Barry was explicit in his support for the pedagogical ideas underpinning Game Sense and the idea of handing over some power to the players. Barry’s ideas on coaching were very well aligned with the Game Sense approach but his lack of familiarity with its player-centred pedagogy limited his ability to realise its aims fully.

Conclusion

Although the development of Game Sense a decade ago drew on existing coaching prac- tices, its pedagogy made it an innovative approach (Light 2006a) that has since generated significant interest from researchers in the physical education and coaching fields. It has had an influence on coaching in Australia, helped by its initial promotion by the ASC and the resources supporting it (den Duyn 1997; Light 2004) but the study drawn on in this paper suggests that it’s most distinctive feature – its player-centred pedagogy – has had far less impact than its emphasis on the use of modified games. While it is difficult to generalise from a close focus study on only four coaches this study does suggest that, at least at the elite levels of rugby coaching in Australia, the player-centred pedagogy of Game Sense has had minimal impact upon pedagogy in coaching. In doing so it draws attention to

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the issue of pedagogy in coaching. Despite some recent attention (see, for example, Jones 2006), pedagogy is neglected in coach education programmes and is underdone in the coaching literature (Woodman 1993; Dickson 2001). It is only over the past 4–5 years that pedagogy has been considered to challenge a dominant view of coaching as a non-pro- blematic linear process of knowledge transmission and a non-critical acceptance of one way to teach. This is a promising start but this study justifies concern with the neglect of peda- gogy in coach education and development programmes.

While coaching has profited from knowledge in the sports sciences it seems to have been impervious to the development of knowledge on learning and teaching. Jones’ (2006) examination of what educational research and developments have to offer coaching provides much needed encouragement for coaching research and education programmes to recognise that the relationship between coaching and learning is complex, social in nature and deserving of more attention than it currently receives. Recent writing on coaching from a socio-cultural perspective and research on the development and application of innovative pedagogy in coaching that draws on education research provides great promise for the development of coaching at all levels (Cassidy, Jones, and Potrac 2004; Jones 2006; Kidman 2001, 2005; Light 2006b; Penney 2006). However, this study suggests that imple- menting such change in practice is not an easy task. Further research is needed on coaching and coach education that challenges its comfortable assumptions about learning being a straightforward process of knowledge transmission for good ideas like Game Sense to make a significant impact upon rugby coaching at elite levels.

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