Sale Minis and Juniors Get First Team Training

A wet Thursday night down at Carrington isn’t everyone’s idea of fun, but tonight, we had Chris Johnson and Andy Hughes come down to work with two different age groups.

Andy came down and joined the Under 12’s for a rucking masterclass which was superb and loved by coaches and players alike.  Andy is our new Community Coach who will be working with schools in Trafford this season.

With the Under 14’s and 15’s we had a more specific clinic for kickers run by Sale FC Number 10 Chris Johnson.  He spent time looking at routine, position, hip movement and visualising the kick.

Tomas (far left) from the Under 14’s was delighted with the session and only missed one of his practice kicks under the guidance of Chris.

Guy Soar, Team manager of the Under 14’s was equally delighted with having a player of Chris’s stature give up his spare time to coach the future senior players at the club.

Andy Hughes gave the Under 12’s his time before senior training to go through the complexities and skills around the ruck area.  Andy who is our Community Coach and also Club Captain has a wealth of knowledge and skill in this area having spent the last two seasons at Sale Sharks and as Captain of Sale Jets.

Sale FC are incredibly lucky to have a wealth of excellent players who give up their time to encourage younger players to be as good as they can be.  This has been a few years in the making and comes down to the encouragement of Director of Rugby Jonathan Keep and CEO Mike Jefferson, along with the Minis and Junior’s committee Chairman Scott Bambrick and his Vice Chair Dave Hulme.

Paul Gibbon Under 12’s Coach had this to say about the evening.

 

We’ve got a great squad of players who are hungry to learn and when first team player captain and newly appointed community coach Andy Hughes turned up to training Thursday evening the players were fully engaged and ready for Hughesy’s rucking masterclass.

The boys having warmed up with a game of touch rugby (the whole) were then treated to Andy’s technical expertise for the rucking session (the part) and then back into a conditioned game (whole) where Andy got the boys to really focus on the rucking technique they had just learnt.

I would encourage all of the age groups to think about their approach to training and think about the best practice for player development and equally as important player enjoyment. The U12s are certainly benefitting from the whole part whole approach and our policy of everything we do is with a  rugby ball in hand.

If this whole part whole framework is good enough for the senior teams at Sale FC my view is that the m&j section should look to adopt the approach and cascade through the age groups. In theory this should make our life easier as coaches with consistent coaching output that all the kids will benefit from and enjoy…the best facilities, the best coaching on offer where the first team pros are actively involved with our m&j player development…what a great story to shout about!