The Little Wizards

Under 6s - Where it all begins

When dealing with children, it does no harm to have a few ideals, and to try to set high standards. And that is how we approach mini rugby at London Welsh. The children come first. We coach all of them all the time during the session. We try to develop their skills so they can do well. We want all of them to enjoy their experience of rugby, to like being part of a club with a great history and in a beautiful setting, and to make new friends.

After their fifth birthday is normally a good time for children to start. The first idea we want to plant in their rugby brains is that when they are carrying a rugby ball they should be running, and preferably in the direction of a try line. The first time a child scores a try at Old Deer Park is always a moment for celebration and applause. Before they can do anything else want them to enjoy that simple thrill, the freedom of running, dodging, try-scoring. Life, and rugby, can and will get more complicated thereafter. Which is shame, when you think about it.

With five to seven year old children their physical co-ordination is improving by leaps and bounds. They gain confidence from this. They learn from watching, from copying. At this age children absorb all the information they receive, every last bit of it........but each child at at his or her own pace. Gradually, through practice, the children learn to feel more secure handling, passing, catching, become confident with the ball in hand. They can start to make more choices as they learn more skills. They have an inexhaustible capacity to amaze with their ideas and invention: our current Under 11s were already experimenting with flying wedges at the age of six!

The progress all the children inevitably make, the confidence they gain, are what it is all about. But there are other spin-offs from mini rugby. One father who travelled a lot in the week, and who got involved in coaching on Sundays told me it had given an ideal context for him to get to know his son and for his son to get to know him. “It's something we do together, and we both enjoy it.”

London Welsh parents and grandparents either on the touchline or helping on the pitch are a hugely diverse group of people. They represent an unbelievable skill pool: when coaching I have been lucky enough to have the wise counsel and encouragement of the great Cliff Morgan, who had come to watch his grandson; I've had the cones laid out in perfect straight lines by a partner in one of the leading architecture practices in the world; I've had the benefit of educational and child development savvy of headmasters; free advice on injuries (there's a result!) from top medical consultants from teaching hospitals; coaching points have been translated for particular children's benefit into Swedish, Danish, French, Hebrew and Spanish. The list goes on.

We set ourselves high standards, we have coaching support from highly skilled senior coaches. We field fully competitive teams at all age groups in mini rugby while competing with clubs with far larger, more impersonal sections. We enjoy what we do and we try to do it well.

We don't forget the needs of adults either: as one coach from a nearby club said to me: “You know something, our dads definitely prefer your bar!”

Seb Scotney

Seb coaches the Little Wizards (Under 6's) at London Welsh, and has been welcoming new parents and children to London Welsh for 12 years.