On the 29th of July George Watson’s College senior rugby team became official beta testers of Coach Logic and 4 months later they lifted the Scottish Cup for the first time in their history. Chris Patterson, former Scottish internationalist, described the match as the most physical schoolboy encounter he has seen. In the end GWC won the match 22-17 scoring a try in the final 5 minutes to steal victory from Merchiston Castle School.

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The Celebrations Begin © George Watson's College[/caption]

I managed to get along to watch the game and post match I spent a bit of time speaking with the 1ST XV coaches, Ally Donaldson and Andy Barnett. After so many near misses I wanted to find out if using Coach Logic had played its part in their teams success on this occasion.

Director of rugby Ally Donaldson said “I have never worked with a more dedicated group of young players before and they definitely deserved their win tonight”. He then added;

“I think the biggest impact Coach Logic had on our team was enabling the pupils to work hard in their own time and take more responsibility for their personal development. The accessibility of Coach Logic is fantastic and because of this our players watched a lot more game footage this year than any other. The ability to share footage securely on-line and watch it from any on-line source meant that pupils were taking time out to watch games during their break and lunch times. I was also able to question players about decision making and tactics and this definitely improved their understanding of the game."

Andy Barnett then added, “player analysis has become a major part of our improvement and your system (Coach Logic) allows us to tag patterns of play, individual trends and more importantly analyse opposition patterns of play.”

As well as being the 1st XV forward coach, Andy Barnett also leads the schools strength and conditioning programme.

“This year we have been able to individualize training programmes to suit the needs of the player and his positional requirements. I am also able to monitor their attendance and track their progress. Before using Coach Logic we ran about like headless chickens trying to ensure we got all the players to training, meetings and the gym, we had no accountability or way of monitoring the players performance.”

Ally Donaldson then concluded;

“Players in our team have never been more accountable for their performances and efforts on and off the pitch. Andy and I are now able to make key tactical or team selection decisions and back it up with hard evidence. Most importantly however is that our players now understand the game a lot better and know what dedication it takes on and off the field to achieve success.”

Watson's tactical awareness and understanding of the game was evident by the way they were able to close out the match in front of around 5000 spectators. Instead of panicking they managed to keep the ball for the last 3 minutes of the match with a series of 'pick and go's'. Then after asking the referee the time they dispatched the ball into touch and so began the celebrations.

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Winning coaches Ally Donaldson and Andy Barnett with the Scottish Cup © George Watson's College[/caption]

We are really happy that Coach Logic has made such a positive impact on rugby at George Watson’s College. The versatility of the system means that they are now using it with their senior boys and girls hockey teams. Hopefully I’ll have more success to report on come the end of their seasons too.

As always feel free to leave any comments based on the above article, and if your team has also achieved success whilst using Coach Logic then we would love to hear from you.

Cheers

Mark