Blog Post

Rocking it with The ECB

  • by The Magic Stig
  • •
  • 09 May, 2019

Rusty swaps a wand for a bat!

Thanks to Diana Lewis, Women's National Talent Manager for the ECB...



Anyone for Cricket?

Firstly, a massive thank you to Rusty for a day’s worth of magic at the National Cricket Performance Centre in Loughborough as part of our Regional Development Centre Head Coach gatherings.  Looking at our world through a different lens led to some great conversation, debate and sharing of ideas for us to continue to shape and challenge our thinking around principles of player development and how we shape our environments to deliver on those principles.  

We had a theme of ‘working towards’ in contrast to ‘unpicking’ in terms of our coaching.  We talked of encouraging competitiveness, creating pressure in a constructive way, how we might cause chaos (ever tried asking a player to use someone else’s bat before they head to the crease? –thanks to Hockey for this gem!), secret missions, stretching players (not literally) at and in between sessions and being mindful of how we best use language in terms of giving feedback and using it to both challenge as well as support players.  

Questions asked in terms of provoking our practice;

Are we delivering experiences or events?

How much time do we give ALL players?  

Do we always stand in the same place, if we moved, might it offer us some fresh thinking/perspective?

How well do we relate to the world our players live in and design our practice around it?

Do we include injured players in our sessions effectively?

Have we asked past players what would have helped them if they had their time again?

Magic moment of the day - the ‘wobble zone’ (if you know you know!).

A fab day and if Carlsberg ran Coaching Days then the Magic Academy would most definitely be present – thanks Rusty!

A Magic partnership with Core37

by The Magic Stig • 29 October 2020
The Magic Academy team up with Core37

Tactical Challenge Cards - Pre Order NOW!

by PH715909 • 31 July 2020
We have used the wisdom of an array of coaches including some of the games top rockstars to pull together over 140 cards with their best games, practices, challenges, scenarios, concepts and coaching hints.

Coaches contributing include Stuart Lancaster, Eddie Jones, Giselle Mather, Jared Payne, Geoff Parling, Danielle 'Nolli' Waterman, Ian Peel & Joe El Abd to name but a few!

Making the most of their lockdown experience, Rusty and Fletch between podcasts and webinars have designed this latest resource to support Wizards in developing skilful adaptable players and teams. The tactical content will centre around challenges based on Scrum, Lineout, Transition, Attack, Defence, Kick Off, and Huddles.

With the cards themed around 'tactical', Vanessa at Fuzzbox Design has rocked it with a new look and new feel to the Cards .We have maintained the 'never tear' material so that they are completely weather-proof (Stig has tested them in the washing machine).

We know coaches are going to love these and have made them available for pre order now with expected delivery from September

Order yours now by visiting the online store here

The Magic Academy Coach Development Platform

by The Magic Stig • 24 June 2020
MA and Coach Logic combine to provide the coolest hang out for coaches who want to get better!

The 3C's of Coaching

by The Magic Stig • 23 August 2019
Rusty and Fletch catch up with Magic Stig ahead of the 3C's world tour!

The 3C's of Coaching

by The Magic Stig • 28 June 2019
Rock it with Rusty and Fletch on this new CPD!

The Italian Job!

by Nick Scott • 8 March 2019
Fletch takes the Magic to Italy to visit Colorno and Nick Scott

Magic night at Woodford RFC

by The Magic Stig • 30 January 2019
Rusty visited Woodford RFC to cast some spells...

When Panda's are asked to share...

by The Panda's • 22 January 2019
Some really cool feedback on Rusty's experiences with his visit to Edmonton, Canada. 

Canada, we loved you, the whole experience was emotional!!!

1. What was the most challenging part of training?
- For me the most challenging part was my personal challenges given to me by the coach (I.e. you can only walk/have to make 3 passes) - im not used to having an individual goal given to me for a game while also havig to work as a team and do something I don't normally do!
- The most challenging part of training was keeping my focus off the ball during play time at moments to figure out how the other team was trying to win.
- Noticing what the other team is doing. I want to work on looking up and manipulating defence. It's not one of my strengths, so I found looking for the 'visual cues' (ie defence walking/blitzing) was a challenging part of training, BUT A GREAT WAY TO REMIND US TO BE AWARE. A good challenge to enforce mindfulness, and I felt like I improved as the training went on.
- Executing one thing after making the decision that that was how you were going “win” the game. The way we played changed completely and was only focused on doing that specific thing. Especially for my team we didn’t choose offloads or switches but crossfield kicks and grubbers. Our playing format changed completely to cater to that.
-knowing you were being watched by a huge number of coaches was intimidating.
 - For me the most challenging part of training was all the layers Rusty added to the play (like the barriers for communication or things the other team would be doing) and how we were forced to figure things out on the go and adapt to that

2. If you could pass on one thing you learned to a coach what would it be?
- ASK your athletes what they want, don't assume that as a coach you always know better than us; involve us in decisions, rules, games, training ideas etc.
- I would pass on that coaches should have fun too, set a good mood and lessen the stress that players or themselves might have. I.e joke telling.
- Complicated is ok!! I think coaches sometimes get stuck in their ways and play the same games and mentally put limitations on their players. They might think that we can't do something, so they don't even want to attempt it. Failure is good and creating new games and drills to challenge our mental game is important!
- Let people have another chance at their attempt; especially if they tried something difficult or new.
- To mix things up in practice with those little challenges. I really enjoyed those.
- Something I'd pass on to coaches would be the fishbowl skills session he brought up because I think that is something that would be beneficial on any team (especially when learning to play the sport) to be able to work on individual skills in a smaller/ more personal setting


3. What was your favorite moment during training?
- Laughing with my team; asking what their goals were and trying to see if we could make it work and when we messed up just laughing about it
- My favourite moment was when he would make jokes and try to involve everyone in his conversation and play.
- Hearing what different coaches pay attention to. (i.e. How many times we laughed in a training<--love that), I also enjoyed being able to try new things in training like kicking!! Forwards get in trouble even when it's just for fun. A lot of skills have been categorized as important for certain positions rather than ALL POSITIONS, so it was nice to break the barriers and just play.
- I liked the incorporation of mini challenges between the games.
-watching the kids get to attempt different challenges rusty gave them.
- Favorite moment would be the mini scrum against Courtney because it was so spontaneous and will probably never happen again haha
4. Any last comments?
- What a cool experience! It's a nice change to play all these games and have opportunities to just try something and see what happens. Thank you!
- n/a
- GREAT COACHING EXPERIENCE. I learned a lot in the hour we trained, and most importantly had great fun with high intensity rugby! Thanks again Rusty!!
- Giving the players the opportunity to try new things was great. Rusty talked about forwards not being allowed to kick and it was very fun to be able to experiment with kicking.
- super fun training session!!
- Overall, I had fun in the session and although it was challenging, I thought it was really beneficial to just be put in that environment where Rusty would challenge us to try new things and I think his perspective as a coach was really refreshing and constructive

"O Canada..."

by Tony LaCarte • 14 January 2019
Tony LaCarte reports on Rusty's spells in Vancouver

The Magic Academy goes "Dutch"

by The Magic Stig • 12 January 2019
Fletch goes 'Dutch' in the Netherlands...
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