Top Ten Sporting Myths That Are Killing Your Sport

Not sure if this has been posted yet

http://newsportfuture.com/top-ten-sporting-myths/

Are you back in WA Pieter?

Some excellent points in that one Piet. There are 2 of them that go hand in hand in both codes of Rugby and are both a blight on the game. The most obvious is the "Pathway" myth and second how that effects coaching. The whole system puts together players who have potential and coaches who want to use them to become professionals (not in every case, but in many of them). It ignores those who just want to become a reasonably knowledgeable and fit player who can enjoy park footy with his/her mates into his adult life and coaches who want to do the same. They end up getting pissed off and are lost to the sport. There goes your grass roots.

I disagree with the point about looking at other countries. A lot of the modified small field games that kids play below the age of 12 stems from the Dutch Football model to develop more rounded skill sets in children and enables them to get more touches rather than stand out in the cold while certain players hoof it long to make it towards the goals on a field that is too long for their age group is what occurred in England. Most countries moved to smaller pitches for kids except the English who stuck to full pitches.

It took them about 30 years of players coming through the grades not knowing how to pass off both feet, being rubbish at penalties (a lot of it is to do with managers not paying attention to it at practice), English managers playing the outdated 4-4-2 even though they didn't really play in that formation for their clubs under their foreign coaches, play one touch Football and being able to play in different positions. Playing the English way doesn't work if you want to win senior tournaments.

Classic example constant talk in the English about how they couldn't put Lampard and Gerrard in the same team as one of the two had to play slightly out of their normal position and they can't find a left sided player.

Having coached Rugby outside of Australia the Irish in particular think quiet highly of coaches from other countries particularly with a knowledge of back play as most Dad's with whistles in clubs struggle with it.