Are rugby players cracking up under the rigours of heavy training?

by a Special Sports Correspondent

Former rugby player and now a coach and strength and conditioning professional Bilal Yusuf is concerned about the quantum of training done by both school and club rugby players.

It is no wonder that players today are taxed more than their systems can take. The reason, according to Yusuf, could be because these players are following a professional training routine in an amateur system.

Gone are the days when hordes of ex-schoolboy players, just out of school, awaited their turn to play club rugby. Very few among these school leavers walked in straight to the club sides of yesteryear because there was a gap between club and school rugby; in terms of the capacity needed to play senior rugby. But now the training load is basically the same for both club and school players.

And as how Yusuf sees it the players are being over trained. “The present training regimes are extremely demanding on the players. Players are training five days of the week and sessions are held twice a day. At the end of the season there is mental and physical fatigue,” said Yusuf who has also had stints both as a school and club rugby coach and also as the junior national coach for the under 20 Asian Championship. At present, he is a strength and conditioning coach for Sri Lanka Tennis.

There have been occasions where even some of the foreign coaches who have undertaken assignments at local rugby clubs having cautioned that the Sri Lankan players are trying too hard. The game has changed over the years and become more physical and the coaches now demand that their chargers pack on the pounds and spend more time in the gymnasium.

Yusuf sees the present system being counterproductive. “Sometimes doing more might make the players mentally tougher, but certainly it would not do good for the game,” he said. According to him rugby clubs around the world, where the players are not professionals, get their players to train twice a week (Tuesday and Thursday) with a game on Saturday.

But here in Sri Lanka players have to hit the gym in the morning, then shower and go to work and comeback in the evening for rugby practices. Even the sleep they get might not be sufficient. “This is a vicious circle and clubs might not be able to sustain the players in this manner,” opined Yusuf.

But a side like Kandy Sport Club could be an exception because the players are professionals and don’t really have to work, so after the morning training they ideally get to have nap and take a rest. When they comeback for training in the evening their batteries are recharged.

However, club rugby coaches and administrators might not listen to the views of a rugby coach cum trainer like Yusuf because the demands on the coach are high. Most coaches are desperate to hold on to their jobs, so they tax the players to the hilt. Yusuf cautions that school rugby players might be training more than club rugby players, hence the former might be close to total burnout when a season nears an end. We also hear of stories where the schoolboy players in their final year of rugby are skipping the GCE A Level Exam because the demands of rugby training don’t allow these players to balance sport and studies. “The problem with the system is that we might not be grooming these players to balance sport, family and life. The joys of a coach is to see them play top level rugby and when you bump into them in latter years to see them having turned out to be happy and responsible citizens,” said Yusuf.

The taking of supplements in rugby is part and parcel of the game. But some players are becoming too big too soon. “Sometimes the mass they are gaining is unbelievable; which makes us wonder whether these supplements that are given to them contain any illegal substance. The supplement taking of players must be properly monitored. We have enough doubts to suspect that some of these supplements may have performance-enhancing substances,” he said.

Insecure coaches can poison a system and make the players believe that more training is good, when the opposite is true. But there is also another issue regarding the psyche of the players. The majority of schoolboy players who have the brains and capacity to study and make good progress in life give up the sport and concentrate on higher education. The sad part of the equation is that the players who are not academics continue with rugby hence this would mean that ones who are playing club rugby might not be able to think for themselves and can be manipulated. But Yusuf cautioned by saying, “Even if you know that a certain way of eating and training is harmful you just have to follow the demands of the coach because rugby is a team sport and you are not playing for yourself”.

Yusuf concluded the interview by quoting what a foreign coach once gave as his response when someone asked whether he considers himself having done his job properly and having given something back to the game. “This coach said come and meet me in ten years time and ask me how my players are doing and whether they have become better human beings. And if they have then I think I could be considered a successful coach,” concluded Yusuf.