COACH CATCH UP is an ongoing blog series we’ve created to be able to highlight different amateur sports team coaches, and talk one-on-one with them to hear about their story and coaching experience. Here, we had the pleasure of speaking with Coach Foard Cooksley, Rugby Coach at Millfield Senior School.
Rugby since age 4
Coach Cooksley hails from Wales where there’s a big rugby culture all over. Starting at age 4, Cooksley’s father and uncle got him into rugby and began coaching him. To this day, his father remains his biggest supporter and inspiration when it comes to his rugby career, especially since his father coached him until he was an adult.
Over the course of his life he’s played for various clubs, namely for Swansea, part of the Welsh Premiership and university rugby too. He now coaches at Millfield Senior School full time, but plays the game on the side as well. He’s always liked coaching alongside playing because he could use his coaching experience and apply it to when he would go to play the game himself.
At an early age he started coaching a bit, sharing “Coaching has really been in my blood since about 14 or 15.” Cooksley always wanted to have an influence on the tactics of the game, which is why he knew so early on that he had a mind for coaching.
When asked about which side of the game he likes better he said, “I do really enjoy playing and I miss it when I don’t play. But I just love coaching in terms of making people better. I have great satisfaction if I put a plan into place during the week and it pays off on the weekend.”
The rewards of coaching
As prefaced before, Cooksley is currently coaching at the Millfield School, which he genuinely describes as “quite an impressive place”, ages ranging from 13 to 18.
He shares, “It’s good to get different age ranges. It really challenges you as a coach to live up to these boys’ expectations. There’s a hefty fee that the parents play to come to play. You feel the pressure a bit.”
Cooksley did get into how rewarding it is to be in the position he’s currently in. Out of all of the rewards, it’s seeing his kids level up and move onto a more advanced level that’s the best feeling for him. “Just seeing them progress and develop….there’s great satisfaction in that because they just appreciate your help. I was actually just in a meeting where the boy I coach just signed his first professional contract to play for England U18s. It’s nice because I can just drip feed him a little advice or experience on his decision-making. That’s one end of the scale I find really rewarding.”
Something a bit more technical that Cooksley loves the most about coaching, is the analysis side of things. He says “Coaches are the biggest thieves” because every one of them, himself included, use the tools and tactics of other coaches to improve themselves.
Teachings beyond rugby
When it comes to motivating his players, Cooksley makes it a point to try and bring a lot of energy to the team and make things fun. He says, “Whatever you’re doing, if it’s the most boring skill in the world, try to make it fun.” Another motivating tactic he uses is adding a competitive element to it and maybe having two or more players compete against each other during practice. For the game, however, Cooksley just focuses on giving his team clear messages so they know where to go.
A big thing for Cooksley in his coaching beyond rugby skills, is connection. Everything he does is underpinned with connection. He relates, “If you have a good connection within the team, that will be enough motivation in itself.”
Also, the most common phrase Cooksley said was “You’re never the smartest person in the room”, and he follows this quote personally, but also preaches it to his players as well. Elaborating on this idea, it’s about being open to learning, taking someone else’s advice, and respecting people’s point of view.
The great teaching here is taken beyond the game of rugby, and into everyday life. Specifically at Millfield School, Cooksley was saying that they place a big emphasis on behaving well and succeeding in their education. They’re able to achieve this by setting conditions such as if you mess about in school, then you can’t go to your next game, for example. This is a good motivating tactic to keep the kids in line, resulting in long term good behaviour.
Crushing stereotypes
We asked Cooksley what is the biggest issue in rugby right now. Of course he began speaking about concussions, how common they are, and what’s being done to prevent them, but a bigger issue he mentioned that was quite interesting and rings true is the toxic masculinity in the sport.
Cooksley expressed that it’s pretty tough because of course this display of toxic masculinity is only within a certain group of people and isn’t across the board, however that’s how stereotypes go….a small part can represent the whole.
Cooksley and his other coaches at Millfield School are trying to be proactive and change the views internally and externally of what people think of male rugby players, as they’re already under a lot of scrutiny.
So far, he has been making strides in eliminating toxic masculinity internally, which we can only hope becomes a ripple effect to the rugby world as a whole.
Advice for other coaches
An important note we ended on was the advice he always reminds himself as well as passes down to other coaches. “Just enjoy it.” he says. “We’re playing and coaching a sport that we love and not many people get that opportunity.”
He elaborates on this point stressing the importance of coaches needing to find out or remember their ‘why’, because there will be times when they’re not paid enough or overworking, so it’s important to be able to always resort back to your ‘why’ in those stressful times.
Cooksley even says that sometimes his ‘why’ will change month to month. There are moments where he’s had a bad weekend and he just resets himself and asks “Okay, why am I doing this?”
At the end of the day though, Cooksley oozes with passion and gratitude for what he does and it’s evident that his advice and coaching techniques leave a long lasting impact on his players.
