Hi Reader

Welcome to the February edition of the Coach Lead Collective, your go-to resource for coaching leaders like you, dedicated to supporting and developing our coaching community.

We’re gearing up to launch the latest version of The Coaching Gig app on Monday, February 17th—It’s pretty exciting! Rugby and Netball will be live, with Primary PE following shortly after.

Saying it’s been a journey is an understatement. To be honest, I now fully understand why no one has (until now) created a truly genuine, specialised coaching tool that aligns with national and regional coaching strategies like this. It’s hard work—but knowing thousands of coaches will benefit makes it worth it!

Even more exciting, we’ve teamed up with NZ Rugby to get the app into dozens of secondary schools across the country, with new specialised coaching content, founded on game-based coaching principles. NZ Rugby is backing teenage coaches and pushing game-based coaching—a perfect fit with The Coaching Gig.

What I love most about this NZR work is the blended learning approach to maximize impact. I’ll be working alongside provincial union staff to upskill coach developers, facilitate workshops nationwide, and provide ongoing support throughout the season. The app will be the go-to tool, giving coaches the support they need, when and where they need it—without relying solely on human power.

Why Game-Based Coaching?

As many of you know, I’ve been flying the flag for game-based coaching for years. The more time I spent in coaching and coach development, the more frustrated I became watching kids stand in lines, doing boring drills that barely resemble the sport itself.

Game-Based Coaching - A No Brainer!

Game-based coaching transformed how I coach and think about learning. I first adopted it as a school teacher and carried it into my coaching. Then, I took a deep dive into the research during my Master’s (if you need a cure for insomnia, I’m happy to send you my 40,000-word thesis - gulp).

But why push so hard for GBC?

• Engagement – Kids (and adults) love learning through games. It’s fun, immersive, and captures their imagination.
• Development – The underlying goal of training is to help players and teams improve. The evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of GBC over traditional drill-based approaches. Players will ‘get better quicker.’

The Disconnect Between Research and Reality

In December, I facilitated at the Teaching Games for Understanding conference, hosted by Auckland University and Sport NZ. It was mostly aimed at academics, with a handful of coaches and coach developers sprinkled in.

But my biggest reflection? The massive disconnect between research and real-world coaching. There’s incredible research on game-based coaching, yet it rarely reaches community coaches in a digestible way. That’s a problem—what’s the point if the people who need it most never hear about it?

The challenge is making GBC digestible and achievable for grassroots coaches. If we start throwing around terms like ‘representative learning design,’ ‘implicit learning,’ ‘ecological dynamics,’ or ‘nonlinear pedagogy,’ we’ll lose them. Our job as coach developers is to translate the research into practical, engaging coaching—because when coaches get it, players benefit.

The good news? Sports are starting to shift the dial. NZ Rugby is placing a stronger emphasis on game-based coaching this year, while Netball’s Future Ferns programme, NZ Cricket’s Smash Play, and the Healthy Active Learning initiative in primary schools, amongst others, are all championing this approach.

And I know many Coach Leads, like yourself, are driving this change and will have wonderful ideas about implementation and influence. Keep it up!