Villiers High School Visit
It was a beautiful June morning on the 25th when forty pupils from the Villiers High School in Southall, West London, arrived at Cranleigh for a day of rugby coaching. Forty fresh-faced twelve and thirteen-year-olds were hosted by six pupils from the LVIth who put them through their paces at a variety of rugby skills. Robin Street, the Deputy Head at the Villiers High School, initiated their rugby club as an after-school activity to encourage an extended extra-curricular programme to help further the academic and social development of the pupils. The club has met for the past two terms for an hour each week, with support from the ‘emerging schools’ department at the RFU and is a ground-breaking initiative for the School.
For many of the pupils it was the first time that they had experienced training with tackle-pads, cones, slalom poles, hit shields, tackle suits and, in fact, a rugby pitch rather than a football pitch. It was therefore a fantastic opportunity to enable these pupils, from a deprived area of London, to experience the benefits of Cranleigh’s facilities. However, the facilities were not the only benefit for the young Villiers High School players: six of the up- and-coming Cranleigh 1st XV were on hand to offer their advice and coaching skills.
Sam Sutcliffe ran a fantastic speed and agility session, making sure that ‘quick feet’ and ‘high knees’ were of the highest priority for the day, while Will Collier and Ollie Edwards taught the Villiers boys the various technical skills of cleaning out rucks, mauls and trying to develop contact skills. Nick Haigh and Fred Stonell’s instructions on how to tackle proved to be too successful for their own good, as by the end of the day both had experienced humbling hits from Akbal, which left both of the coaches nursing bruised behinds as well as egos! Freddie Hobart’s efforts to teach the finer points of handling proved hugely successful at developing depth, structure and continuity to the Villiers High School’s game.
The day was rounded off by a round-robin touch rugby tournament, in which the Cranleigh pupils each took ‘captaincy’ of one of the teams and tried to encourage a flowing game of rugby which oozed all of the skills that had been developed that morning. The eventual winners were captained by Sam Sutcliffe, who showed excellent leadership in encouraging the Villiers pupils to control the game for themselves and to learn the correct decision-making process in a pressured game environment. These games were excellently refereed by Cranleigh School Deputy Heads, Andrew Griffiths and Tim McConnell-Wood. Three awards were presented at the end of the day which were decided by the panel of coaches: most improved player, best attitude and to the most promising player. These awards were won by Farhad Mohmand, Abdiaziz Osman, and Karandeep Matharoo.
My thanks go to the Cranleigh coaches: Sam Sutcliffe, Nick Haigh, Will Collier, Freddie Hobart, Ollie Edwards and Fred Stonell, all of whom conducted themselves in a thoughtful, professional and enthusiastic manner. I hope that the Cranleigh pupils learnt as much as they were able to instruct and that in the future this visit may become a regular part of the Cranleigh calendar.
Sam Cooke
Published
02 July 2008
- Category
Sport
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