The Under 11s have a tight squad of 18 players. For some it is their 6th season of rugby and for others their first! This gives the coaching team a wide and diverse skill set to work with each week.

Our philosophy is an all-inclusive one, as we build young rugby players with the core skills to play together in a team game. For us the core skills of catching, passing, running and tackling are the heart of rugby and the boys will have many years to learn more technical aspects of the game.

We have a coaching team of five, consisting mostly ex-players but also a Scottish water boy who helps with warm ups and carrying the kit. Until this season we had only backs in the coaching staff, but this year two forwards have joined the coaching team to give some well needed experience in the darker arts of the contact area!

The team had great success from Under 7-9s with a great winning record and lots to cheer about. Last season we started reprogramming the boys from, “run until I get tackled” to working more as a team. Not being the biggest side, we don’t want to get too heavily involved in contact, so passing before contact is what we work on. This has been a hard year for the boys as there is a stronger element of decision making and trying to play what’s in front of you. To their credit they have all stuck at it and the more skilled in the group have become less selfish and are playing a much better team game. Even during a season of many defeats the boys continued to believe and we reckon most weeks that our boys played the better rugby. We don’t rely on missed tackles for us to score; we rely on creating space and moving the ball to players in space. This attacking philosophy has meant we have spent less time on defence but we can fix that more easily, and in recent weeks we’ve tightened that area up and become more difficult to score against.
This season we have started to give the boys more freedom with what they do on the pitch. They have to start making their own decisions as players, work out what’s right, what works and what doesn’t. The mantra of “let them play” is one we follow. We can coach the core skills and tell them what to do on the pitch but coaches are on the touchline and in the game it’s up to them to play not us.

This team has a tremendous amount of natural talent, and when they play well they are unbeatable. Our aim for the rest of the season is to ask the boys to up their levels of concentration and turn the brilliant 5 minutes into 10 minutes and make sure the passages of great play last longer - more intensity and greater concentration. Most importantly of all, our Under 11s are a great bunch and lots of fun to coach.

Tim Holmes – Under 11s Coach