Coaching Culture with Ben Herring
Coaching Culture with Ben Herring is your weekly deep-dive into the often-overlooked “softer skills” of coaching—cultural innovation, communication, empathy, leadership, dealing with stress, and motivation. Each episode features candid conversations with the world’s top international rugby coaches, who share the personal stories and intangible insights behind their winning cultures, and too their biggest failures and learnings from them. This is where X’s and O’s meet heart and soul, empowering coaches at every level to foster authentic connections, inspire their teams, and elevate their own coaching craft. If you believe that the real gold in rugby lies beyond the scoreboard, Coaching Culture is the podcast for you.
Episodes
144 episodes
They Said It Couldn’t Be Done, So He Built the Asia Pacific Lions
A packed stadium, free entry, a brand-new team built across borders, and a cold email that ends with Northampton Saints landing in Colombo. We talk with Saabir Cader, the founder behind the Asian Pacific Lions, about how Sri Lanka rugby became ...
The New Rugby Team That Could Change Asian Rugby | Jamie Henry
A captain’s job gets real when the message is hard and the stakes are higher than one person’s pride. Jamie Henry joins us to talk about the uncomfortable side of professional rugby: selection, disappointment, and the quiet way a results-driven...
The Culture Behind 54 All Blacks | Auckland Grammar School
What if the strongest teams aren’t built by hype, slogans, or “high performance” talk, but by a few clear rituals everyone can count on? I sit down with Dave Askew, deputy principal and First XV coach at Auckland Grammar School, to get a behind...
Paarl Boys High School | Inside the Program with Sean Eramus
Rugby can fill a stadium. Culture can shape a life. We sit down with Sean Erasmus, head coach at Paul Boys High School, to unpack what it takes to build a values-led rugby program inside one of the most tradition-heavy environments in the world...
How Ryan Martin led Northland’s Historic Ranfurly Shield Win
The Ranfurly Shield isn’t just a trophy. It’s a pressure cooker that turns every home match into a final, pulls entire towns into the story, and asks players to carry something heavier than a scoreboard. After Northland’s first Shield win since...
Why Winning Teams Still Have Culture Problems | Ross Neal
If someone had to “explain” your culture to a new hire, would it fall apart the moment pressure hits? Ross Neal joins us to get brutally practical about what culture actually is: what you do and how you do it, so clear that a person could sit i...
Newington College GPS Champions | Inside the Program
A championship season can tempt coaches to talk only about tactics, but the real story sits in the spaces between school, sport, and growing up. We sit down with Tim Rapp, head coach of Newington College First XV and Australia U16 head coach, t...
Why So Many Good Coaches Are Struggling | The Invisible load
You can spot a coach on the sideline in seconds. What’s harder to see is everything they carry home afterward: the player who’s struggling, the conversation they should have handled better, the pressure from parents or committees, the fear of j...
Ex-Wallaby Reveals How Culture Is Really Made | Ben Darwin
“Culture” is the most overused word in sport, and we’ve both heard it used as a lazy explanation for everything from blowout losses to surprise championships. So we put the uncomfortable question on the table with Ben Darwin from Game Line Anal...
Ex-All Blacks Analyst Reveals the Danger of Statistics | Al Rodgers
You can know the “right” answer as a coach and still miss the point if your environment pushes people in the wrong direction. That’s the thread we pull on with Al Rogers, who spent nine years as an All Blacks analyst during a golden run, then m...
Why Good Coaches Don't Always Pick the Good Players
The hottest debate in any team sport is selection, and we get why it drives people crazy. From the stands, it looks like a simple list of the most talented players. From the coach’s seat, it’s risk management, culture building, and performance ...
Pressure Made Me Forget Who I Was | Joey Mongalo
Pressure doesn’t usually change a coach with one big blow. It changes you slowly, one compromise at a time, until the season ends and you realize you’ve been walking around in fog. Joey Mongalo joins us for a contrarian round of questions on co...
How to Break Through as a Coach (Without a Playing Career)
A Champions Cup-winning rugby attack coach who never played professional rugby should not make sense and that’s exactly why Noel McNamara’s story matters. We sit with the uncomfortable truth that the “perfect CV” is often overrated, and the rea...
How a maths teacher became a world class coach | Noel McNamara
Winning a major trophy is supposed to be the moment, but Noel McNamara doesn’t romanticize it. He explains why a title can feel like relief for ten minutes, and why the harder, more meaningful work starts immediately after: rebuilding energy, s...
What 23 Years at Leicester Taught Me About Leadership | Geordan Murphy
Some teams win because they have better players. Leicester Tigers, at their best, won because they had a culture that could survive anything, including brutal training, relentless internal competition, and the pressure of living up to an identi...
THE NEW MASCULINITY OF COACHING Craig White
Most teams don’t lose because they lack information. They lose because pressure hijacks attention, connection, and decision making. Craig White joins us to unpack a simple truth that too many coaches miss: your team feels your nervous system be...
How the Hurricanes Value Culture. Tom Kindley
A 60-5 final score makes headlines, but the real story is what has to be true inside a team for that kind of performance to show up when it matters most. We’re joined by Tom Kinley, General Manager of the Hurricanes, to break down the culture s...
The Power of In-Person Conversations
Getting selection wrong isn’t only about who you pick. It’s about how you tell people. We dig into one of the most uncomfortable parts of coaching: delivering news that changes an athlete’s week, their confidence, and sometimes their future. Wh...
The Real Job of a Coach Isn't What You Think...John Dams
Ever wonder why some teams click faster, learn quicker, and bounce back stronger? We unpack the real levers behind high performance—where data sharpens intuition, language creates buy-in, and framing turns meetings into movement. With performan...
The Hardest Transition Of My Life Nemani Nandolo
What happens when a record-setting, globe-trotting winger trades the try line for a whiteboard? We sit down with Nems to explore how he’s building the Fijian Drua development pathway with a people-first approach that still demands edge. From Le...
Coaching Your Own Kid
Coaching kids is one thing. Coaching your own child can feel like stepping onto a field where every word carries twice the weight. I’ve been thinking about why so many coaches avoid coaching their son or daughter, even when they love the sport,...
Dark Moments Build Great Players. Joe Rokocoko
Ever been told to start at zero? Joe Rokocoko has—and he calls it the sentence that rebuilt his standards, his respect, and his career. From a Fijian village to Parisian match nights, Joe opens up about the unseen work behind greatness: how cul...
The Power Of Little Hooks
A small moment can change an athlete more than a big speech ever will. We’re digging into the idea of “little hooks” the tiny wins, cues, and shared moments that get players latched onto learning and pulling themselves forward.We start ...
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Alex Laybourne: Swedens rise to Top 30 on a shoestring
What does it take for a fully amateur national team to punch above its weight and chase top-30 ambitions? We unpack Sweden’s rise with head coach Alex Laybourne, tracing a bold shift from “show up and play” to a no-excuses culture where standar...
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