England’s Simon Middleton Named World Rugby Coach of the Year; Canada’s Kelly Russell Featured in World Rugby Article and NZ Coach Glenn Moore Under Investigation
It has been an interesting week around coaching and women’s rugby. Kelly Russell was highlighted by World Rugby in an article about the Maple Leaf Academy. The article is here. Does the timing have anything to do with the pending announcement of who will be the senior women’s 7s coach? We’ll see.
In NZ there’s an investigation of the women’s XVs coach, Glenn Moore, after a player went public about a mental breakdown and blamed the coach’s comments as a contributing factor. You can read the article here.
The focus of this article though is the England XVs coach, Simon Middleton, selected by World Rugby as the Coach of the Year. Here are a few articles, present and past on Simon.
Announcement of World Rugby Coach of the Year
England Rugby article in May 2020: My Story
There’s also a video interview of him, along with Eddie Jones, see below. Simon’s segment starts at 13:40.
So what makes a great coach, a question a lot of people might ask and I’m sure you would get different answers. I’ll leave this here for comments and I’ll add my thoughts to this article later this week.