When Kids Tackle Their Dads They Learn Faster

Watching kids train can tell you everything about a coaching environment in minutes. Are they going through the motions, or are they lit up with purpose? We share a small, practical idea that creates a huge shift in youth rugby coaching: stop leaving parents on the sideline and bring them onto the field as part of the session. After seeing a junior team in Sydney’s inner west learn tackling technique by tackling their own dads, we break down why it worked so well, how it boosted confidence, and how it made safe body position and wrapping feel unforgettable. 

We also talk about motivation and standards in youth sports development, especially when it comes to fitness. The Bronco test is a simple way to track conditioning across a season, but we add a twist: the “Director’s Bronco,” where the coach runs the shuttle-run test alongside the players and the clock stops when the leader finishes. That one rule turns a routine fitness test into a challenge kids want to train for, because they have a clear target and a real reason to care. 

The bigger takeaway is leadership. Whether you’re a parent, coach, or director of rugby, your presence changes the vibe of training in ways you can’t always measure. When leaders sweat with the group, demonstrate effort, and share the work, their words carry more weight and the team’s culture strengthens fast. If you found this useful, subscribe, share it with a coach or parent, and leave a review. What’s one drill you could upgrade by bringing an adult onto the field?

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Transcript

Dads Join Tackling Practice

The Director’s Bronco Challenge

Lead From The Front

Final Coaching Reflection

SPEAKER_00 1:06

Hey team, welcome to Reflections, the Midweek special where we dive into little things that um uh just nice little things to chat about during the week, just to spark our brains and what we're thinking about. And the one that I have today is the involvement of parents, or not even just parents sometimes, but older figures such as you the coach and what we're doing on the field. And where this spark from is I went past uh a junior grade coaching session where there was seven or eight-year-olds being taught how to tackle. And there must have been about 20 of them in a in a team down here in the inner west in Sydney. And it was beautiful to watch. And I actually stopped and I watched for about 20 minutes where there was a marvelous coach there who did who's done something really wonderful in that he had all these eight-year-olds out there, and each one of them had brought their father. And I assume that was a directive from the coach is make sure your dad turns up to this session because we're going to use them in the session. And he lined up all these fathers standing about five meters away from their sons, and they were all super excited to be there. And their sons were super excited for them to be there, and they were getting taught how to tackle. So the coach was walking between the two lines, the line of parents and the line of boys, eight-year-olds, and he was teaching them the techniques of tackling. And what was special about it was when they were tackling someone or getting their head on the right side and learning how to wrap their arms and put their shoulders on, they weren't just doing it to a bag or one of the other students or one of the coaches. They were actually doing it to their father. And their fathers were loving it. And I don't think I've ever seen that before en masse. 20 dads and 20 sons at an organized training session working together. And what I saw happening was when the little kids ran up and tackled and they rapped and they stuck with their shoulder and they had the head on the correct side, the dad would do this big Hollywood fallback. Oh, amazing. And the kid would get up feeling a million bucks because they've just knocked down the biggest person in their life, you know, the most important, the most powerful, the most strongest, the person they look up to in their life at that point. And I just thought it was absolutely joyous to watch. And I sat and watched it 20 minutes. It was just cool. And what it also did is it created this great bonding between all the dads who were doing it, and they just were feeding on each other. And the the sort of antics they were getting, big arms flailing back, and whoa, that's an amazing hit. And the energy that was created in this coaching session was phenomenal. And the little kids would run back to the start point and the coach would add a little point like, make sure you squeeze a bit harder, really, try and knock your dad down. And my goodness, they were just into it. For 20 minutes, they were having a wail of a time. They would be running back saying, Did you see me get my dad? All that kind of business. And I just thought it's a wonderful little thing if you're coaching young kids to really use your resources. And one of your resources, the best resources you can get is your parents. Because the kids spark up on it. They love it. Just the way they were just so enjoying the session because their dad was doing it with them. And that's not only from a technical point of view that they were actually more invested, more switched on, and more willing to try their hardest, but they were loving it too. They were, there was absolute joy and what a memory. And I certainly know from my perspective, from the flip side of that, it's a joyous thing for the dad to do or the or the mum to do if it's a mum in that case. It just creates this real connection, like almost like a forced connection which you wouldn't otherwise have. And I think it's a great way for coaches of young children to just remember that you've got this resource that often just stands on the sideline and watches. Now it doesn't have to be the tackling element, it can be any element. I often love the idea of using coaches instead of using poles. Sometimes, or cones. You get some of the parents on the sideline and say, can you just stand there, there, there? And okay, kids, run round those four parents as fast as you can. We'll have races that way. And you watch how much more invested, how much harder they go if they have to run round their parent as opposed to a stationary, innate cone. There's so much more excitement, so much willingness to impress. And I think that's lovely. And I just think it's something that's worth raising. And while I'm talking about that influence on this sort of stuff, I would also want to talk about something I've just done recently to try and instill a bit of competition in our younger kids. So we're we're I I'm running a group of 12-year-olds. We're working to make this group of 12-year-olds where the season's just started. And we have this policy throughout where I'm coaching at the moment. We have about 450 um young men that uh play rugby of all different levels from 12 all the way up to 18. And what we're doing with young kids is that they're doing the Bronco at the start of the year. For those that don't know what a Bronco is, it's a running test where you essentially run about 2.4 kilometers in shuttle runs, and you see what time you get. And you know, over the course of the year, seasons as you go, you get to track how good you're going. And it often shows how well you're going at fitness. And we're going to do, we've just done something a little bit different this year. We've done what I call a director's broncho, where I'm running the Bronco with them. And there's a couple of reasons why I'm doing this, and it's very similar to what I just saw. In fact, it actually sparked off from seeing the interaction of the parents is because I'm the director of rugby here. And if I'm doing this fitness test with some of the young children, it's setting a pretty good example of what the standards are. And we've made it even a little bit more um competitive because I want to drive a little bit of competition. I want people to be proud about their score they get on these tests. So the rules is for this Bronco, the director's broncho, which is on me, is when I finish the Bronco, the clock stops and no one else's time's kept. Meaning, if I run six minutes and you come in at 6, 10, it doesn't count, the clock's already stopped. And when we do the Bronco again after the holidays, which is in a month's time, I'll be right running it again. And these children will have this desire that they need to beat the director. And so they have to train hard over the summer to try to beat them in this test. And I think there's a real hype around this. And like there's this real energy similar to the the children and their parents. They're wanting to do that a little bit more to try sort of leave in a good mark with their dad. Well, this is very similar to that. And I love it in that they are trying to beat beat the head coach at this thing. And if they don't do it, they walk away going, Oh, I didn't do it. This this guy is four times the age of me, and I can't beat him in this little running test. And I love that little bit of fire it stirs up. And I I really think it's important sometimes as a coach to actually get involved in some of the drills you do. Some of the best coaches I've had were the ones which just got involved in everything. We had we had a session with Joe Schmidt the other day, and he was out there doing all the drills, moving around, and he's 60. And the the young men that were being coached by him for the first time just loved it. They were they built on his energy. They felt him in proximity, and their level grew. And I think it's important to note that it does. If you're working alongside the players you're coaching, and you don't always have to do everything, but if you're sometimes in there jogging along behind a team run or in there watching with them super closely when they're doing a La Ruck drill, or if you're holding a hit shield or a tackle bag at times, it actually creates this little connection piece which adds rapport to you and the players you're coaching. Certainly, yeah, like I'm well past doing the tackling element, my knees wouldn't hold up, but to be around it, to be in there with them is a really good coaching practice. I think we always want to be coaches that are invested in there. Like if you think about rugby as like a battleground, like, say, let's just imagine those World War I and II trench lines. Now, I always wondered about how you'd feel being given orders by someone in an office from the other side of the world. Go run through there. No man's land. You'd almost be resentful. Who is who's tell who's ordering this? Why are we doing this? But if your leader is running there with you, running through that and leading the way, you kind of go, Right oh, well, this is just what it is. And you go with them. And that's kind of what you want your coaching. You want the things that you're saying to actually have a lot of weight. And sometimes getting in there and doing it yourself as a parent, as a coach, as a leader, as the older figure in your group is an amazing way to really get by. So that's my little reflection for today. Use parents, use the older statesmans in your teams to set examples, to be there, to add their presence and weight and atmosphere and energy and that invisible stuff, which is just the feel and the vibe to the session. Because you can't always measure how that all come out, but I can assure you it will make a lasting mark. Until next time, stay super well.