Applied Coaching Research Journal

HOST: Hello and welcome to this podcast to accompany the UK Coaching Applied Research Journal. With me today is David Fletcher and we're going to talk about the article that he and his co-authors have written titled How Can Swimming Coaches Become One of the Best in the World. So welcome to the podcast, David. Thank you so much both for sending in the paper for us to publish and also for joining me on this podcast to introduce the paper and bring it to life. So, I would love to start with a little background to you and your co-authors. So, tell us a little bit about yourselves.  

DAVID: Well, good morning and thanks very much for having me on the podcast.  

So yeah, as you say, my name is David Fletcher. I'm currently a professor of Human Performance and Health at Loughborough University. And I guess almost a story behind this paper started, dare I say, back in the mid 1980s when I became a competitive swimmer. Watched Adrian Morehouse won one Olympic gold medal at the Seoul Olympics. And there as an 11 year old sat on my parents floor, that was the dream, if you like, for me as a child. And I became a competitive swimmer. And I swam through my teenage years, went to boarding school Mount Kelly, which is very famous for swimming and did pretty well in the sport. I got up to Olympic trials, went to Olympic trials in 96 and 2000. Swam at the Fina World Cup in 98. And that was really like many kids, kind of like my life as a teenager. And at school, sport was certainly my favourite subject. So no surprises that I went on and did sports science at university. I went to UWIC, now Cardiff Met University for my undergrad. And just kind of like retired, I guess, if you like, from competitive swimming and my sports science career took over. 

I was fascinated by all areas of sports science and swimming science was still my real passion and my hobby. And I was actually fortunate enough to be lectured by Professor Sheldon Hampton at the time, who was a sports psychologist for the 98 Commonwealth Games swimming team. And so he really opened up my eyes to the world of psychology and the science of psychology and how that could be applied to competitive swimming. And I was kind of like pinching myself really, because I was seriously, can you make a living from this sort of stuff kind of thing at that juncture in my life when you obviously start to pay bills and that type of thing.  

So fast forward a few years, went on to my PhD in the psychology of Olympic swimming, and then started at Loughborough as a lecturer in Performance Psychology in 2007, and I've been here nearly 20 years since. So, you know, that passion of the interface between swimming, psychology, coaching, all of those things has never gone away. So, this was a real passion project for me personally, and I was really fortunate to have two wonderful collaborators on the project as well. And massive shout out needs to go to Jillian Cook, because Jillian Cook was the PhD student who did all the hard work basically on this project. She travelled around the world, interviewing Olympic coaches and swimmers to really drive this project. And was fantastic to work with. She's now working as senior lecturer in sport and performance psychology at Liverpool, John Moores. And then also we had Dr. Mike Peyrebrune involved as well. And I've known Mike since back in the days when I was at boarding school, because he was coach at Loughborough University at the time, and still is a coach. He's done a lot of things in between, but he's still a coach here at Loughborough. So, we've known each other nearly 30 years. And his background is actually physiology. And he was a lot of the science behind some of our success on the big stage with Becky Adlington, Adam Peaty, Dan Within most recently. He worked with them and alongside their coaches. But Mike is a very skilled scientist practitioner and has a lot of expertise, not just in physiology and coaching, but knowledgeable around psychology and other areas and biomechanics as well. And he was great to have him involved as kind of like a critical friend that could help guide, but also so well connected across the globe with these top-level coaches, as you can imagine that became critical to help things unfold. So hopefully that gives you a little bit background to myself and the co-authors. 

HOST: Yes, thank you. And obviously really shows how the breadth of your applied knowledge and expertise and you know that this, there isn't a disconnect between the three of you and basically what's going on the ground in sports. So, thank you very much. And so I would love to hear you have touched a little bit on where it came from, but this particular project, can you just tell a little bit more the inspiration of why the research behind this particular paper and why you felt it was important to do? I know it's part of the PhD project.  

DAVID: Yes, that's right. And a lot of the research projects I've been involved with, I could probably identify two main rationales, one coming from the science and the literature. So, what are the journals and the research findings telling us and what are the gaps in the knowledge that we need to break into? And this project was no exception. But also, I've always liked to have a strand of rationale, like what's going on in the real world, and in this case, like coaches on deck, and particularly in recent years, I've been doing more and more with Loughborough University swimming and with British swimming as well. So, I've had the opportunity to be out there consulting with both swimmers and coaches. And I think what I'll do is I'll tell you a bit more about that side of the rationale rather than the academic side of the rationale. People can go and track down the articles where we outline that academic side of things. But in terms of the practical side of things, I was observing that a lot of the coaches were aspiring to take their career on and become an Olympic coach and actually more specifically become a successful Olympic coach. And we can come back to defining what success means later on. So I think that is an important consideration. But for the time being, I was chatting to these coaches and quite often, they would be picking up tips from other coaches on pool deck, they would be maybe spending a bit of time at other programmes around the country, maybe doing searches of the internet, listening to a few podcasts, perhaps reading the occasional book and article and all of this would be helping them develop as coaches.  

But one thing I've noticed down the years, even when I started out in my swimming coaching when I was 19, 20, there tends to be a lot of information out there around training sets and technical skills. You pick up any of the major textbooks in swimming coaching and indeed listen to a lot of podcasts and things, they'll talk about training sets and that type of stuff. But there's less around the psychology and the behavioural aspects of coaching. Another aspect I thought was lacking was a lot of the actual research that's out there in swimming coaching and high-performance swimming tends to be at the sub-elite level. So, participants might be national or lower-level international swimmers. But if we're talking about success at the very highest level and delivering medals at major championships like Olympic Games or World Championships, then we need to be looking at people that are medalling on the podium at those events.  

And then finally, the material in this area really varies considerably. So going back to what there is out there around psychology and behavioural aspects, you know, a lot of it tends to be maybe reflections, maybe some like case studies. And you can pick up the odd tip, but it's hard to get a handle on how robust is some of this information. So, I was getting out to a few coaching conferences, listening to a few of the speakers. And yeah, there was certainly some gold nuggets, but some of it I was really questioning based upon my knowledge of the psychology research that's out there as well in terms of best practice. So yeah, there were a lot of the practical drivers behind the paper itself.  

And just again, being out on deck, a lot of coaches I was working with at the Olympic level, were asking these questions around what's it going to take to really deliver at a consistent level on the podium. So that was a big drive for me. In essence, what's the difference between the world's best swimming coaches and the rest? That was really the impetus behind this paper.  

HOST: Thank you. We can come back to the ‘Best’ bit again. I've got that jotted down. So could you give us a quick overview of what you did and why? So basically a brief summary of the paper. Obviously, we want people to read it, but just an introduction to what did you do and what did you find?  

DAVID: Yeah, so this paper is obviously a practical paper based on two scientific research studies that we published. And the scientific research studies are basically around the psychology of Olympic swimming coaches. So not the swimmers themselves, the actual coaches themselves around their mentality and their behaviours. And we carried it out in collaboration with British Swimming. We have various personnel there on board with it. And what we did was we literally, I say we, as I said earlier, it was actually Jill who did all the hard work. I say hard work. Actually, swimming coaches tend to be located in quite nice locations around the world. Florida, the Gold Coast and things. But with support from British Swimming, she got to fly around the world and speak to these really successful swimming coaches. When I say successful, she spoke to 36 Olympic coaches who collectively coached swimmers to win 352 Olympic medals. 155 were gold medals. So that gives you some indication of their success.  

And then also she spoke to 38 of those coaches most successful swimmers. And again, to give you some insight into just how successful they were, they'd won 59 Olympic medals, 31 of which were gold medals. So, we were really talking about people that had achieved at the highest levels. And to get inside the heads of these coaches, we gave them surveys or questionnaires that measured three main areas.  

First of all, their personalities. Secondly, what I would describe as darker aspects of their psyche. And then finally, their literacy of their emotions. So that's, when I say we're looking at their mindset and their mentality, that's how we broke things down. And there are good scientific reasons why we chose those areas and questionnaires that tap into those different areas. And we can look at those maybe in a bit more detail. But that was our approach. And Jill flew around the world. And I might add, you might be sat there thinking, well, did she really need to fly around the world to give out these questionnaires? There's actually a part two of all of this where she interviewed all of these coaches and their swimmers as well. So that kind of like justified a bit more of the travel because interviews tend to be more effective face to face.  

But this article in the two scientific papers I mentioned earlier, we don't report any of those findings yet. That stuff's still to come in the pipeline and we're bringing that out, hopefully in the next couple of years. So the focus here was very much around these surveys that were getting into their psyches. And the important point I might add, just before I finish up on this question, was, of course, it's one thing giving these to the coaches and the reporting back and filling out these questionnaires. We also gave them, as I say, to some of their leading swimmers. And we asked those swimmers, if you think about your coach, how would you score them on these questionnaires? So the questionnaires weren't about the swimmer's psychology. They were about the swimmer's perceptions of their coaches. So, of course, what that allowed us to do was make a comparison. The coach is saying this about themselves and the swimmer's saying this. So then it opens up some interesting angles on this around whether they've got the same perception on the coach or the slightly different ones. So that, in essence, is what we did. And it was reasonably groundbreaking because nobody's really done this to quite the same extent that we've done.  

HOST: Thanks. So, personality, you talking about The Big Five?  

DAVID: Yes, that's absolutely right. So, some of your listeners may be familiar with some of the science behind personality. There's a number of different areas you can look at. So we looked at what's called The Big Five. So as it suggests, the big five aspects to someone's psychology. And this is not, I'm sorry, to their personality. It's not specific to sport or sport coaches. This is widely used across the population. And we looked at conscientiousness, openness, agreeableness, extroversion and neuroticism. Those were the big five, the main five aspects of the personalities of these coaches that we looked into. And we also looked at, I mentioned about the darker aspects of psychology. We looked at Machiavellianism, psychopathology and narcissism. And sorry to use technical terms on quite a practical podcast. In the article, we talk about what this, you know, in a much more user friendly fashion around what these are. But because of time, I probably haven't got time to go into each of these in detail right now. But yeah, just teasing the article, we get into that and explain what these terms mean. And then I also mentioned, we gave out questionnaires around people's emotional literacy.  

So a lot of your listeners will have heard of Emotional Intelligence. Well, that's exactly what I'm talking about here. And this is very much focused on the coach's awareness of their own emotions and how they can manage their own emotions, but also their awareness of other people's emotions, most specifically their swimmers, and how do they manage those emotions. So, anybody who's done any coaching will know you can hardly get through a training session without emotions, be it your own or the athletes that you're coaching becoming a factor. But of course, if you're talking about an Olympic campaign and putting people on a podium, then it will come as no surprise that this is a hugely important area of the psychology of coaching.  

HOST: Yeah, thank you. And again, we're encouraging people to read the article. And I think it's probably worth that just by quickly mentioning a lot of coaches will have done things like spotlight profiling. And some of that is based on the big five personality traits. And we talk about understanding yourself, understanding others. So, there's lots of bits that they will really recognise within this, and from their own practice. So, what did you find? Big question, the big question.  

DAVID: Gosh, yes, that's it. So we we brought down the analysis to compare coaches who'd coached an Olympic gold medallist in their career versus those that hadn't coached an Olympic gold medallist. So this idea of going back to what's the difference between the best coaches and the rest. So, I should say just at this point, I know that's kind of a contentious way of doing things, or at least, not necessarily a contentious way of doing things, but possibly a contentious way of describing things because coaching an Olympic swimming gold medallist doesn't necessarily merit the label of being the best coach. So for example, you know, I know plenty of the best coaches are those that connect with the swimmers the best, or that maybe they're able to change a swimmer's life for the better, be it their technique or be it their experiences in their sport, or it may be the best coaches are the most ethical ones and give something back to the sport and community.  

So we definitely, as authors, have taken some liabilities with that in both the title of the paper and throughout the paper. And the reason why we've done that is just it's essentially because when we were chatting to these Olympic coaches, that was the language that they were using in their world. And how do I become one of the best that they saw being the best as putting people on the podium? And I know that opens up a whole conversation discussion. So we've kind of used this in this article, particularly because that is our target audience. So I recognise that. But nonetheless, that's how we organised the research was looked at a comparison between those coaches that have coached the Olympic gold medallists and others.  

And what we found in essence was that there were differences in a couple of key areas. Narcissism and one's perception of emotion seem to stand out as key differentiators between those that coached Olympic gold medallists and the rest. And the reason why I say there were key differentiators was going back to what I said earlier about the coaches and the swimmers. This is where they were in agreement. Both the coaches themselves and their swimmers both said that Olympic gold medallist trained coaches, if that makes sense, they were actually lower in narcissism than coaches that didn't coach gold medallists. And also they had better perceptions of their own emotions and emotions of others.  

Now, where it gets quite interesting as well, the coaches themselves, but not the swimmers, they thought that they or their perceptions were that they were higher in agreeableness. So in essence, they were more agreeable coaches. They were lower in Machiavellism and they were better at managing their own personal emotions. So when they got on pool deck, if they were having a bad day, they could manage their own emotions. So, this is what the gold medal coaches reported as being a differentiator. But interestingly, the swimmers didn't see that. The swimmers saw the the best in inverted commas, these successful coaches. They were more open to different things and different experiences. They perceived these coaches to be more conscientious in their planning of training. And they were better at managing others' emotions. Now that's an interesting contrast, because the swimmers thought they were better at managing swimmers' emotions, whereas the coaches thought they were better at managing their own emotions. And it may well be that it's a combination of the two. And probably a bit less interesting, but the swimmers and coaches were in agreement that there weren't any differences in neuroticism, extroversion, psychopathology, and the utilisation of emotion.  

So in essence, what's interesting about these findings, first and foremost, is coaches' mentality and their behaviours and their actions. There does seem to be a difference between those that coach Olympic gold medallists and those that don't. And there does seem to be some agreement and some differences when you speak to coaches and when you speak to swimmers about this. And all of this has some implications for how we educate and support these coaches who did want to go on and land people on the top of podiums at major competitions. 

HOST: As you're almost separating sort of super elite from elite, I'm just thinking I went to Bangor, so Lou Hardy and Tim Woodman were where, you know, there's a little bit of the area they were in, I went into skill acquisition and motor control. But that's always fascinating, those differences. I think, yeah, very, very interesting. I know when I looked at it, the managing your own emotions, I think if you can't do that, you can't manage other people's. It's almost like I, you know, from just a lay psychologist and certainly, you know, within other sports, if you can't manage yourself, then you're not actually able to connect with other people. So maybe that's why those two things don't agree, but it might well be very linked.  

DAVID: Yeah, I mean, we could talk for a while about that specific area. And part of my PhD, I was looking at stress and how people handle emotions linked with stress. And I got into this area called what's called emotional labour, which is where there are certain professions where you're essentially paid to convey certain emotions. The example famous example is air hostesses. So you be on an eight-hour flight and customers are being rude to you and you're tired and yet you've got to smile and be polite all the time. Another famous example is it like if you work at Disney, you got to be smiley and happy all the time. And indeed, part of their actual training for employees is to how to be positive and upbeat. You contrast that with other professions like an undertaker that would be wholly un-unappropriate to skip into work every morning and you're paid to be solemn and things like that. So, we could go on through lots of different professions.  

And one of the areas that I think is interesting is around emotional labour in sports coaches and how they are essentially conveying different emotions at different times. So they've got to be able to convey self-belief and confidence and be able to suppress uncertainty at certain times. And so it all goes back to this area of managing their own emotions and how that links in with supporting others' emotions too. And in my experience, they've had next to no training or awareness of any of this. In swimming coaching, if you're doing your swimming coaching qualifications, psychology gets a very little look in any way. And a lot of it is, in my opinion, very dated, shaky research. And where it does get a look in, it's kind of like here's some ABCs and mental skills training for athletes. So, it's not actually psychology of coaching. It's the psychology of athletes. And then coaches have got to go away and figure out, well, do I sit down with a swimmer and do some goal setting, or do I bring in a coach and all that sort of thing?  

And then, of course, we could then get into the psychology of coaches' well-being. That's a huge area right now. And how much training do they get in that area? So, yeah, we could, we could talk at length around this. But I think that is some of the messages to come out of this paper is that we really have got to update some of the coach education and professional development and indeed the support, the mentoring and working with a psychologist, not necessarily with the athletes, but with and alongside the coach too, which is easy for me to say being based at a high performance centre. I do appreciate a lot of people listening into the call may not have that level of resources. But nonetheless, there is some support out there for these aspects.  

HOST: Yeah, thank you. And maybe, yeah, it's coach development or coach developers. Where is that role? What goes into coach education, like you say, supervision or psych support? Yeah, it gets wrapped around the athlete at the moment, doesn't it? More than the coach. So, yeah, brilliant. Thank you so much, David. I hope people have enjoyed or at least taken something from that and are looking forward to reading the article if they haven't done so already. So thank you very, very much. Any final words? You did a bit of a so what, which I was going to ask at the end, but you've kind of already tagged that on.  

DAVID: Yeah, I think I say, yeah, the main point is that I think for swimming coaches, but coaches more broadly not neglecting the psychosocial, the behavioural aspects of this. And I think Sports Governing Bodies as well have got to look at how they better support coaches on this journey. I think that's the big ‘so what?’ And then there's various areas within that that you can unpick. And you say the article is coming out and we get into that in more detail. And for those that are more interested in the scientific underpinnings, there's two scientific papers that are cited in the practical articles, so people can track that down or email me if they're interested in the nuts and bolts of the science that underpins a lot of this. But yeah, hopefully that's what we're hoping is that the paper can reach coaches and coach developers and national governing bodies to take things forward in this area. But thanks very much for the conversation. We enjoyed it and really enjoying seeing how the journal itself is unfolding and the articles that are coming out within it.  

HOST: Thank you very much. 

HOST: Hello and welcome to another podcast to accompany the UK Coaching Applied Research Journal. The paper that we are going to talk about today on this podcast is called Motherhood and Coaching from Grassroots to Elite Football. And I'm joined by the lead author, Matheus Galdino, and I hope I pronounced that correctly. So welcome to the podcast. Matheus, could you give us just, yeah, introduce yourself, a little bit of background so that, yeah, bring yourself to life as a researcher and somebody who's interested in football. And then let us also have a quick introduction to your co-authors.  

MATHEUS: Yes, I am originally Brazilian. That's why the pronunciation might sound awkward right away. But I'm based in Germany, where I'm finishing my PhD this summer. And I've been working there in the Department of Sport Science with some teaching workload, including the football course for our Bachelor's. Although I also conduct some sociology, management, performance-related seminars, both with the Bachelor's and Master's. But my background is actually more practitioners based because I've worked for Red Bull with athletes’ management. I've worked for ESPN, also worked with professional football players. In the meantime, at the university, besides the teaching, I'm also responsible for the football teams, both the men's and the keep my eyes and my attention between theory and practice as much as possible. Therefore, these studies sent in parallel to my PhD are helpful, of course.  

Yes, that's why I'm here chatting to you and hopefully we have some useful information about the co-authors. Yeah, for this particular study, we actually segmented from a bigger research project that had approved by UFO with a research grant program 24-25 cycle. And then since the majority of our sample came from the UK thanks to the involvement of all three FAs, England, Wales and Scotland, I just decided to somehow dissect into one angle that would be realistic and attractive for the general audience beyond academics, also the practitioners. In this case, because we concentrated only on female coaches, exclusively on female coaches, without comparisons to male coaches. Yes, so there are different angles to explore. Motherhood and household situation is one of them. And that's why we have this particular study in place now.  

HOST: Thank you. So, could you just let us know why you were interested in exploring motherhood? So, whether these female coaches were mothers, were parents, and their sort of household situation. So, what was your intention or the aims behind looking at that data?  

MATHEUS: Because I became a father myself three years ago, and I realized how hard it actually is, how challenging it is. One has to experience all the conflicting, contradicting decisions to give the proper value to it. And being honest, because balancing parenting and coaching or employment or anything else is extremely challenging. So, the life of a parent, I think, is always happy, always tired. Imagine for coaches who have to work evenings, consecutive days, and also lose or waste weekends away from home, whenever the families cannot follow up with them. So yeah, out of the whole data set, there were variables, there were angles that could be explored. And then when we looked at the amount, the relative and adversarial numbers of mother coaches, those with childcare responsibilities, and also the differences between the status of their household, it was an interesting, I would say, recent angle to explore, given the rise, the substantial, exponential rise of women's that will somehow, consequently, bring more women into the game, not only for the women's side, also the men's side, or in general, for the industry. And yes, there was the main incentive to conduct this parallel study of the bigger project. 

HOST: You made me smile there, because I remember when I became a mother, and I was a single parent for a long time, so it was really interesting and coached. That was definitely challenging. But my son, my son probably your age, actually, he's in his late 30s now. But it was, I find it incredible that it's still something that we know so little about. So, I was really excited when you sent in the paper, initially. And so I wonder if you could just, and again, it's interesting, because it's a quantitative, you pull some quantitative data out, rather than just the qualitative data, which I think was really, really interesting. Could you just give us just an overview of what you did, so how you gathered the data for this particular study, and what the results were?   

MATHEUS: So, in a nutshell, we asked women, female coaches, what their reality is. And we came from the demographics into their coaching experiences, their coaching and how they foresee their future across potential coaching contexts, those that will be more likely to be involved in grassroots recreation, all the way to elite levels. And obviously, because the questionnaire was framed in a way that would allow us to generate a lot of variables and analyze different angles, we could also emphasize particular countries, territories, or country contexts.  

The bigger project included more than 1,000 coaches all over Europe. And then when we dissected this particular study to look only into the UK subsample, we had 194 female coaches involved. Roughly 50% of them were mothers, so that helped, of course. And we decided to just compare the situation. What is the reality? How much do female coaches get involved with football coaching activity, in terms of years of experience and hours of coaching per week? When we look at mothers and non-mothers, as well as depending on the household situation. Those are living alone, without adults, for example, or those live with their parents, or those were already with their spouses or partners. To understand how far potentially the shared responsibilities in a household with somebody else would somehow correlate with their coaching activities. They would work more hours, less hours at a statistical standpoint.  

So from a statistical perspective, these comparisons should generate reliable findings or results that we could compare and consider that these are realistic, because if we would roughly, if somebody was not a statistician or familiar with academic studies, we would have a very low percentage of errors. So we could rely on these numbers for the comparisons that would exceed basic statistical data, just the basic descriptive numbers. We offer some calculations that allow us to compare the situation of those that have significant, statistically significant differences, so that we would trust these numbers more than basic comparisons.  

HOST: Thank you. And it also means that data can be gathered in the future and compared, so we can look at changes in a way that is different from just the descriptive experiences. 

MATHEUS: We can expand as well. If one decides to look exclusively into one country or one territory with one specific license, then at least we have some groundwork and all, because most of the studies, as you have pointed out, are qualitative in nature. Those that are quantitative, usually they rely on frequency analysis, so basic percentages or rough comparisons do not offer us enough insights or realistic comparisons.  

In this case here, we try to run away from the existing knowledge that is qualitative, which we already know that are extremely relevant, that informed this quantitative analysis. On the other hand, just looking at the numbers, we cannot jump into conclusions, specific decisions, because we need to then transfer back into the context to see what makes sense in the UK, Germany, Switzerland, or its grassroots or elite levels. And that requires, I think, a more substantial and deeper know-how that will come from the female coaches themselves and also their surroundings, because that's the most important stakeholders that will somehow influence positively their future in the sport.  

HOST: Yeah, thanks. And it's nice to hear you talk about that you have that context matters and how it matters in different countries. They have different social cultural and as well as different sports structural environments. And that is a huge influence on the experiences of everybody in those systems, isn't it? So what did you find? What were your results in a nutshell?  

MATHEUS: In a nutshell, right away? Mothers tend to work less than no mothers, surprise, surprise. Only in coaching. We don't even need calculations beyond coaching. They run the house, leaders inside the house. Yes, they coach, less hours and also they have been involved for less years in comparison to non-mothers in women's football, even in men's football. We see a slight difference, a positive difference that they have been involved a bit longer in men's football.  

The main results point out that female coaches who do not have childcare responsibilities, they almost double the amount of hours that mother coaches are involved. So if we consider the weekly amount and then you transfer this to a monthly and an annual amount, coincidentally, maybe that's why looking at the number of years they have been, mother coaches have been involved at less in the women's game than non-mothers. And moving from motherhood to a household situation, we see that the female coaches will live alone without adults, other adults. They also work significantly more hours in comparison to those who live with their spouses or partners. They are responsible for themselves, their own coaching workload, they potentially have a better schedule. This is something to find out whenever we have some qualitative discussions. So, we can only speculate with the numbers when we see the bigger picture. But we see a difference.  

Those who live with their spouse and partners also work significantly less than those who live alone. On the other hand, they have been involved in women's football for a longer period of time in comparison to those who live with their parents, potentially because on average they are older. So chronologically, they have also accumulated more years of experience. The interesting finding is that when we look at the female coaches who live with their spouse or partners, so they work less hours. And they also consider that the elite levels of coaching both in women's and women's football is not for them when we compare them to women who live with their parents. So female coaches who live with their parents, they aspire to higher levels of coaching more than female coaches who are already sharing their household, their spouse or partner.  

We do see some coaching activity being affected by motherhood and a shared household. Why is that the case? Well, again, we would have to contextualize into the lives and schedules and commitments of these female coaches to better comprehend their reality. But this is the bigger picture. So, we have the numbers. Now we can further explore, rely on them and somehow find ways to support them. So then instead of distancing, isolating them, somehow integrate them to see that, what can we do to help your reality?  

HOST: Yeah, I think that's the important bit, isn't it? What do we do with this data? And how do we find ways to help those coaches who are mothers? We discussed at the beginning of this, my second screen is not working either. If I remember from the paper, one of the things you found was that the mother coaches are more likely to be coaching at grassroots. Apart from some mother coaches who are coaching in the male football. Was that right? Which is interesting.  

MATHEUS: Yes, that's right. That's right. They are more, mother coaches are more likely to foresee a future coaching activity for them in grassroots levels, in comparison to non-mothers. Why is that the case? Why would be that the case? Well, potentially because grassroots recreational sports, we have more kids involved. But then, well, let's say I'm a mother, my son is already 20 years old, my son is no longer a child. Does that apply to me? Not necessarily. But on average, that's how they perceive their future. Their future involvement in football coaching is more likely to happen in grassroots rather than in women's football. When we compare them to those who are free from childcare responsibilities. But in men's football, there were no statistical differences. So, we wouldn't really be a distinction, at least considering this sample, the amount of female coaches were involved in this particular study. Yeah, those non-mothers, those who still don't have children, perceive that they are more likely to be involved in the women's game.  

HOST: The non-mothers who thought they would be at a higher level. Yeah, so they're almost more ambitious or more confident of their... Again, you need the qualitative data to know why. It's interesting to hear you say that you didn't find those differences in the men's game. It's not surprising, but it is interesting. So I guess that's where, for me, this paper is interesting for those who are involved in coaching, whether they are mothers or female or not, but anyone involved in coaching and in coach development, supporting coaches, to look at maybe how they support female mother coaches in all sports, if there's a difference there.  

MATHEUS: Yeah, there's a big question mark here, whether this is their own... That's how they perceive their future or that's how they perceive the reality and therefore they try to assimilate and somehow accept that because obviously men's football, we are dominated by testosterone in every single position and then male coaches are exponentially higher in numbers and also... I think the sequence of years, the sequence of hours they have been dedicating to men's football has also been spread across Europe, not only in the UK. The men's game is perceived for male coaches rather than female coaches. But in women's football, I think they still believe that there is a higher likelihood for them, there are higher chances for them to achieve, to accomplish their goals. But again, we always have to challenge whether this is their call or their adaptation to a reality, how they assimilate.  

Something to discuss also among men, I would say, among the male coaches, among the male decision makers, supervisors, defence. Why not? If we are all born from women, the vast majority of us are raised by women. So we have the leaders, the coaches inside our house, why not the outside, but this is me being a slightly feminist. 

HOST: All for that. So before we recorded, but briefly, and you said at the beginning, this is part of a bigger project, it's part of your PhD research project. And you have some more ones coming. So it would be really good to, we'll definitely keep our eyes peeled for those. And thank you very much. Thank you so much for joining me and give us a little introduction to this paper. Yeah, I'm just like, I've got so many, I have more questions than answers, which is always a good place to be with some research. And I think it's a fascinating and really good contribution to the area. Like you say, very unusual to have a quantitative study. But really useful. And I'm, you know, as somebody, I guess I was somebody who was a single parent, I certainly had far more time than my, than my friends who were who'd stayed with their partners, because other, you know, my child spent time with his dad and his grandparents, and I had control over my own household. I didn't have a husband to look after. But that might not be why, why you found this data that yeah, it was really interesting. I always had far more time than my married friends. And it's not that that's a good, a good thing. It should be that we can have both, I guess, or that women can equally contribute and be ambitious, and still be mothers.  

So thank you very much for sharing your research with us. And I look forward to hearing the rest of what you what you're going to publish. So thank you. Anything, you'd like to share before we before we finish?  

MATHEUS: Well, I think, well, just a minor detail. This is a parallel to my PhD. It's not part of my doctorate dissertation, but it kept me involved in academia for a bit longer than I presumed. And it was, to be honest, it's pretty much a slap in the face. As a male coach, educator, practitioner involved with football for a bit of time to look at the data. When you start dissecting the data, analysing it, not only for this angle, there are also other angles in which we explore publishing, financial data, the salaries, something that is hopefully will be published this year, later this year. It's just a slap in the face to say, well, the reality is completely wrong.  

It's completely unacceptable, unsustainable unless we decide to change this for the benefit of everybody. And yes, that's what drove the incentive for, I think, to still be stuck with these data and these studies for a few more months until I'm done with my academic journey.  

But yes, it was nice to explore the angle alongside the FA's of England, Wales and Scotland. They were super supportive since the beginning, I can tell now, away from any politics, micro politics, corporate thoughts, they were supportive because they believe something must be done. This came from inside out, not from me pushing anything. So, this is something to keep in mind. And yes, let's see, let's see how the coaches and the practitioners perceive the results.  

HOST: Thank you. And that is actually very hopeful. I know myself and others often have conversations, like you say, it's still not acceptable. It feels like we've been saying the same thing for decades and trying to solve this for decades. But it does feel like there have been some big changes in the last few years. And I feel very hopeful about that. So, thank you very much for being part of that change and being part of supporting more inclusion in football. Thank you, Matheus.  

HOST: Hello and welcome to a podcast to accompany one of our research papers in the UK Coaching Applied Research Journal. This podcast is to accompany the Ethics of Coaching Children's Contact Sports, a cost-benefit consideration. And I am joined by the paper's authors, Jack Hardwick and Matthew Shaw. So, Jack, could you give us a quick introduction to yourself, please, before we talk about the paper?  

JACK: Yeah, yeah. So, as you said, my name is Jack Hardwick. I'm a senior lecturer in sociology of sport and I'm also the course leader for sports science and coaching at Nottingham Trent University. I've got a broad background in a range of areas across sport, physical activity and health. But for the last eight years or so, I've been doing a lot of research on all things to do with concussion and sport.  

HOST: Thank you. And Matthew, could you introduce yourself, too?  

MATTHEW: Yeah. So, I'm Matthew Shaw. I think the easiest way to explain this is I'm a senior lecturer at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences. Do you want my Norwegian name? Høgskulen på Vestlandet, if anybody understands that. So, I've been teaching higher education... I'm now in my 16th year and I've been doing higher education in Norway for the last eight years now. And I teach a broad range of topics, sport science, coaching, research methods. I guess outside of my work, I've been relatively heavily involved in trying to develop rugby in Norway. I founded a club in my local town, and I've been a rugby coach in various formats since about 2020 in Norway.  

HOST: Great. Thank you. So, slightly different. Your collaboration, you bring slightly different lenses to this. I think we'll probably dig into this as we go through. So, can I come back to you, Jack. Can you just give us a quick overview of what prompted you to write the paper?  

JACK: Yeah. I mean, I think that comes off quite nice, what Matt just said. It really came out of a dialogue that we've both been having for I don't know how long now, maybe four years. But as Matt says, he's come at this from the position of being a coach in rugby and an academic with a background in sports science. I've come at this from a background of not being involved in sports in a coaching capacity but doing a lot of research in it from a social science perspective. And I can't remember now how me and Matt came into contact, but we've had ongoing conversations for quite a few years now around what this paper is on really, which is the ethics of coaching children in contact sports. We've both been involved, although I haven't coached sports, I've been involved in sports most of my life, playing sports, I've worked in sports, and obviously I teach sport now professionally. And Matt's got a similar story.  

So, this paper was really us kind of figuring out some positions on children in Host 

contact sports specifically, particularly around concerns around concussion and brain health problems, which me and Matt both have got research interests in, but also quite personal experiences with through suffering these injuries ourselves but also researching them in a range of different sports for quite a few years. So, I mean, that's where the papers come from. It's really come from us having numerous, numerous conversations over WhatsApp and voice notes. And I guess we've sought to kind of formalise that really. I've been doing this a little bit longer than Matt in terms of this specific area. And this paper is kind of like a, I guess, the accumulation of quite a few years of speaking about this topic, teaching it and doing research on it. And I really kind of what I've been doing the last year is trying to get people to engage with these conversations. So that's where the paper has come from.  

HOST: One of the things that comes through in this is that, I mean, obviously there's so much talk about concussion now in many sports, whether that's rugby, heading in football, falls and equestrian sports, for example. But you're going almost like coming back, not waiting until there's been an injury. So, I don't know, Matt, if you could pick up on that. So, this isn't what you're not talking about what to do when somebody has sustained an injury, are you?  

MATTHEW: No, I guess it would be more about preventing an injury in the first place. Yeah, it's as simple as that really. Can we think about how we can avoid those situations? You know, what's the classic line? Prevention is cheaper than the cure. Is that right?  

JACK: Prevention is better than cure. There are loads of different areas.  

MATTHEW: I forget these phrases in English these days. But that's ultimately what we're talking about.  

HOST: And you're not talking about the big, what I mean is you're not talking about the big obvious ‘somebody's been knocked out’ injuries.  

MATTHEW: Well, I mean, of course, we were about how that could be avoided as well. Well, yeah, a lot of it's framed around the idea that these longer-term injuries, these longer-term neurological issues could be avoided. Yeah. So, I guess we're covering both acute and chronic or acute and long-term issues ultimately. Does that make sense?  

HOST: Yeah. So, for a coach, could you, so Jack, could you explain what these accumulative, maybe lesser injuries are, what they're called, why you're interested in them?  

JACK: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I'll just kind of carry on from where Matt finished there. But I guess one thing to quickly say with the whole paper is that, and this whole area, I think it can be really simplified down to there being two issues. And the first one is concussion, which is what everybody hears. And more accurately, that's a mild traumatic brain injury. We only really call it concussion in sport, but the more accurate term is traumatic brain injury. And that's those injuries that happen, like you just said, the big hits, they're usually fairly obvious. People will show signs and symptoms. And a lot of the conversation so far in coaching discourse, but sport more widely has been concussions bad, when it happens, what should a coach do? You know, how do we educate coaches on the signs and symptoms? How do we get them to know if there is a suspected concussion to pull the athlete out? And then what should they do? And that's great. And that needs to carry on. And that education is really important. Where we're coming in is the second issue, which is the accumulation of smaller hits that don't always present with signs and symptoms.  

So, I mean, there's various terms that are used. So, it was subconcussive, now people say non-concussive. I like to say repetitive head impacts. It's an easier term. But that just means basically the very routine things that happen in a lot of sports. So, in football, it's head in the football. In rugby, it's rugby tackling. In boxing, it's punching. In ice hockey, it's body checking. So, you get the gist. There are loads of other sports that are involved. And it's the impacts that repeatedly happen to the brain, but they don't present. So, when someone goes into a rugby tackle or heads of football, we might not see anything. They might not show with signs and symptoms if it was a concussion. But that doesn't mean there's not a problem or some kind of damage being done. And what we've seen over the last 10 years, particularly, but it's really been going for quite a while now, more than like 20 years, that the accumulation of that, so multiple, multiple small impacts the brain over a period of time, we're now very confident that that is a risk factor for neurodegeneration later down the line. So, we've seen, particularly in the media in the last few years, a lot of former rugby players and footballers coming out in the media with problems basically around dementia.  

MATTHEW: What have you said to that? Because you mentioned former rugby players. And the quote I have stolen from Alex Popper, former Wales International, has been diagnosed with early onset dementia. I'm paraphrasing now, but I've heard him a couple of times on podcasts and interviews say it's like running a tap for 20 years, like little drips will be nothing at the time. But then if you left that tap running for 20 years, you're going to have a puddle there. And that's effectively how he's looking at his own brain now. But at the time, it's not really made any difference. But when you add it up and accumulate it, you can see the impact it's had.  

JACK: Yeah, and that's a better way to put it than I was saying. And then I guess to link it back to this paper and to coaches, I guess a lot of me and Matt's work is to raise awareness around concussion and, you know, contribute to education around what that is, how to identify and what to do, but also to bring in a conversation that there's these longer term issues to think about. And we know it's fairly well established in the science that greater exposure to repeated impacts and the earlier age of exposure. So, if someone starts a sport, if someone starts contact rugby, for example, at six years old, and they play through until they're whatever, nearly 30. That's a significant period of their life receiving these sort of impacts that we now know, come with quite significant risks.  

So, we basically start in the conversation of how can we reduce those risks and what can coaches do? And that's where a lot of the conversation at the moment is still very reactive. It's still as Matt was saying, what do we do when a thing happens? But we want to shift to, well, how can we create environments where the thing doesn't happen in the first place? And this idea of, you know, prevention is always better than cure. And that's where really where we position this this paper and a lot of this conversation that we try to open up.  

HOST: Yeah. So I think what would be nice to pull through is I'm kind of thinking there's two sub bits. One of them is for coaches to understand this so that they can think about what they do, maybe positions people are in, what, you know, having non-contact for younger, which I know in rugby there is, I know that both of you would like that age lit higher. But so, there's the coach awareness and education, isn't there? And then the other bit which would be nice is looking at that cost benefit considerations, because everything in life is that. And I think that would help not set up a straw man as well, if that makes sense. And I'm thinking of this from somebody who’s sports people would consider high risk, you know, and yeah, hold on to those two things.  

I think the thing that's interesting for me here as well, because I'm supposed to say before we go on, a lot of the time when we have exposure to a stressor, we grow stronger from it. But that's not the case with this, is it? This is not like, you know, like impact from like running or that would create bone density or muscle mass or, you know, normally we grow and develop from those impacts. But in this case, because it's the brain that doesn't happen. Is that right? Yeah. And that makes it quite an anomaly in sport, doesn't it? When we're thinking about that cost benefit analysis.  

JACK: I mean, I think you've hit the nail on the head there. I think, you know, the brain is the most important part of the body, right? It's so central to our function and what makes us makes us us. So, and it's we also know that it's not designed to take impacts. So, the human brain is very vulnerable to repeated impacts.  

So, you're right. I mean, you said about the cost of benefits, me and Matt, you know, we've both lived the positives of sport, and we both have loved sport and still love sport. Matt was telling me just before this, he was catching up on his wrestling, and I think it is that you follow. So we've both very, very kind of on board with sport can be absolutely amazing. It's brought us, you know, we've both now got our careers around it. And I think one of the things that often get lost with this when we have these conversations is they get shut down that it's like it's an anti-sport position. But really, it's a very pro-sport position. We want children to play and these sports to stay popular. So the thinking behind this really, as you said, the cost and benefit is, well, how can we maximise the benefits? How can we make sports as good as possible for children so that they're going to carry them through into adulthood and then continue as old as possible? And how do we minimise the costs and the risks associated with particularly contact sports? And then, yeah, as you said, when it comes to things around the brain, that then becomes a lot more important to really push and think about that, that cost benefit balance, which, you know, I'll let Matt jump in, but I think a lot of coaching practice at the moment isn't necessarily fully leaning into what those costs could be and some of the realistic solutions that are already available that could reduce those costs quite easily.  

HOST: Well, Matthew, I'll let you come in with that.  

MATTHEW: Well, I don't really know where to start with that, but yeah, like, I mean, what's the greater cost then losing your personality and humanity, right? That for me is the main thing. Like, there's loads of pros to sport. I mentioned at the start how I now live in Norway. I basically have a massive network of networking people It's basically through sport, either from me participating or coaching it or through my kids playing it in various different ways, like my oldest boy doing multiple sports, skiing, football, other stuff. So, yeah, like, I'm never going to say that sport is a bad thing. It's just about those benefits. How do we maximise them? And do we need... where can we modify to maximise those benefits? And I think there's multiple ways in which we can modify traditional formats of games. Some are starting to do that; some are a little bit behind.  

We're also... that pace of modification seems to vary in different parts of the world as well. But I guess ultimately, it's about looking for modifications. Like Jack said, we kind of get perceived as anti-sport or another response often. Or you're going to change... the game will not be itself anymore. Rugby won't be what it is anymore. Those kind of… And we're not saying... we're not saying lose your identity. Most sports have changed since they were invented or created or codified, whatever word you want to use. I'd say football is probably the only thing that's not really changed its rules since it was invented. But most sports have been modified in various ways. We're just trying to keep up with what the literature is telling us about brain injury.  

HOST: Good. I know... I don't think this is in the paper actually. Thank you. Thank you both of you. I'm also thinking, as well, the things that we understand more broadly about sports and the things that people... and one of those is not specializing. So again, you talked about, you know, this is cumulative. So, if you've got somebody who's playing rugby, only rugby, only contact rugby over longer periods of time, that there are, you know, like there are things within that, that you can balance by having lots of different sports, doing that less, lots more non-contact, less contact. Yeah, so I wonder what you think about that.  

I mean, some of it is, and like you say, sports... I mean, rugby is an old... you know, these are sports that are quite traditional. Obviously, you know, I'm involved in... I look at equestrian sports, very traditional, often very hard to change. Rugby union, I know, are good in some places. And maybe this is somewhere where you're saying, like, that would be good for them to catch up. But I'm wondering, again, going back to coaches, the type of things that coaches could do, maybe, like you say, mix up the type of sessions they do. Be aware of this in their sessions, feed back to their... I'm kind of making up as I go along. But yeah, go on, Jack.  

JACK: Yeah, I was just going to jump in, I suppose. I mean, I think we touched on this throughout the paper, but there is a very clear way forward, which is to remove the contact elements from these sports. And as Matt said, one of the kind of push backs is then that it's not the sport. But, you know, first, we have to say, what is a sport? It's a social construction, what we call in sociology, which means it's basically a load of people getting together and deciding what the rules are, and then telling other people what they are. And that inherently changes over time. So, there are various ways. In rugby, there's tag and touch rugby. In boxing, headshots can be prohibited. In ice hockey, you can remove the body check. And then if we think about something like football, heading is already being phased out at the youth level. So, the last time I checked, I think it's banned until 12 years old in the UK, and then it's phased in over time until that person reaches 18. And then it's still quite controlled then at the adult level.  

I guess what Matt and I are asking for coaches to consider is, well, how can we take that kind of preventative thinking into a range of different sports? So if you are a rugby coach, how can you take this idea that you want the best for that child? If you're a rugby coach, you probably want a child to have a sport. You want them to get all the potential benefits of rugby or sport more broadly. But what can you do that's in your control to reduce the risk? And one way you could do that is to introduce far more non-contact forms. I'll let Matt speak to that because one of the things that kind of me and Matt really got into over dialogue is Matt basically shifted his practice to tag and touch or I don't know if there's a real difference there, but to touch rugby for youth children, at the youth level, sorry. And I think you had quite a few issues. From memory, Matt, we had quite a lot of back and forth about that wasn't an easy transition. But it's something you've worked on over a number of years to kind of establish that and explain it to parents, explain it to the children. So, I'll let you speak to Matt about that because you've got the coaching experience.  

MATTHEW: Yeah, yeah, definitely. But I wonder if is there any, Marianne, is there anything you specifically want me to address about? Because I could talk about that all day.  

HOST: I think maybe some of the, if there are any myths around the pushback you get? Is there sort of perceptions from parents that maybe push back, or from other coaches? What are those social barriers to changing your own coaching practice within your own club? Or misunderstandings? I mean, I think for me, the key bit of this is this educational, you know, like I wasn't as aware, before I read this, I, you know, I was very aware that if, you know, somebody fell climbing and banged their head or they came off a horse regularly and had a head injury that that was a, you know, that was a, you know, concern. But I wasn't, I wasn't aware of these, like micro, all these micro traumas that are embedded within some sports.  

MATTHEW: So, from an educational perspective, that's certainly hard to get across. It's like anything. It's like, if you can't see it or feel it, it's just hard to just generally grasp. It doesn't feel tangible. It doesn't feel real. Like, it's hard to get people to understand that what you're doing now might have an 20 or 30 years time. And a lot of people will say, oh, okay, it might happen. So, I'll cross that bridge when I, when I come to it. I sit and have lunch with colleagues who work in the same department as me and they still, they still basically don't accept these ideas, because it's so far ahead in the future. So, when you talk about, I guess, myths or understanding, it's hard to get that buy-in about something that might not happen. And if it does happen, it's going to happen in a long time. It depends. It's hard to explain, or it's hard to pinpoint. Because in some ways, it's very easy to be able to do what I do, where I do it, because people have no pre-existing understanding of the game. But if I travel to a major city with a lot more, a lot more people that have come from rugby playing countries, basically the Commonwealth, who are socialized into the traditional practices, their kids are playing full contact, because that's what they did. And it is hard to get them to try and think of it any differently, just on the basis of, like you said, it's just tradition. It's just, it's what you do.  

So those trying to look ahead into the future, I don't know if I would call it a myth, but it's certainly a misunderstanding that's hard to get people to really acknowledge. Yeah, that's been the biggest difficulty, but it's not been a massive difficulty for some people. I realize that's quite vague, isn't it? It ultimately depends on the background of the person, and how socialized they've come into it. I think about my own research, right? I've had a lot of fun banging my head in my 20s playing rugby union, playing it every week. But I've also still, I've always still had a distance to it. I only took it up post-uni, I only started playing when I was 21. But I've been playing with people who took up full contact rugby from the age of like eight. It's the only thing I've ever known. And you can tell, even though we've shared a changing room, we've shared a pitch, we've played together, you can see a closeness and a distance from it. And that's the biggest challenge, trying to get the people who have not known anything differently, to try to accept, not accept, that's the wrong word, try to be open to a way of doing it differently. I guess that relates to any tradition, right?  

JACK: Guys, I'll jump in super quick. Just one really quick point on that, from what Matt was saying. You said, Marianne, earlier about myths and misconceptions. I think one of the main things we hear is that children have to learn these things. So a child has to learn tackling young, or how to head a football, or how to punch. And if they don't, they won't pick up their skills at 18. And I think it's quite clear that there's very little evidence that that's the case. And the question that I mean, I would pose to coaches is, well, how can you get creative with your practice? How can you develop a child to get physically conditioned and ready to do that at a later age in your practice? So, if it's rugby, can you do various forms of non-contact strength and conditioning, and get them to learn all the things they need, agility, all of that for non-contact, and get them to the place that the best is possible when they are 18? Because I mean, the reality is for us, you know, all the will in the world and all the training, there's always going to be inherent unknowableness about having people collide into each other or punch each other, whatever it is in different support context. That's always going to have a risk factor to it. That doesn't say that's a bad thing. An adult should be allowed to engage with that. And, you know, if they're fully aware of the risks.  

I think one of the main things I think that needs questioned and pushing back on in the coaching world is that children need to do these things. That's often just seems to be like an assumption. But there's very little evidence to support. And there's also quite a lot of professional athletes, particularly in American football, that picked up the sport late. And they still got to the professional level, if the thing if that's what someone cares about. There are athletes that have managed to get to, you know, whatever level, and they didn't have a childhood learning those certain skills. So, I think that's a big one that needs, you know, a lot more, I guess conversation around it and tackle them.  

MATTHEW: Well, you just think about what I said, like, I didn't start until I was 20, 21. I didn't start playing rugby. I'm not saying I was any good. But I played like, what was National 3? It's like a semi-professional level, a decent standard. And so, I didn't, I didn't have any, I never touched a ball, a rugby ball, until I was 21. And then that was the first time I was introduced to contact rugby. I didn't, I'm not saying I'm an amazing tackler, but I didn't feel the need to have been taught that six years old, to play as a consenting adult. 

HOST: I think this leans back into what I said at the beginning around, you know, we're getting so much more information and data around goods, you know, like goods, practice, I guess, and training. And I certainly haven't read anything that would suggest that specialising young and doing only one sport is a good thing in anything. But so if we're adding, then these like brain traumas into that, that would, and like you say, the evidence around, do you have to specialise? Do you have to have done this young? There's an awful lot of work to go in there, isn't there?  

I can't remember, I think, Matt, you said it, it was like, it's just the same for everything, isn't it? And we're always talking in our societies around how do we get behaviour change? How can we, you know, educate people to understand and make better decisions, or to at least have more knowledge and understanding to make informed decisions? And informed decisions for children. So, yeah, I think that it sounds like it goes back to that, doesn't it?  

There's probably some nested myths. One of them is, you know, what you do makes you stronger, but it's not the case with the brain. You know, those micro traumas don't make your brain stronger, like they do muscles and bones. You know, having that single sports that you do all the time, and therefore, there's so much more of it over a longer period. 

Yeah, I wonder if that before we wrap up, I mean, and fast, thank you so much. It's a fascinating paper. But before we wrap up anything, you know, in terms of what would you like, you know, like the coaches, the conversations to have, or, you know, to share this, talk to parents, with each other, explore creative ways to coach rugby, I don't like to see happening.  

JACK: I'll jump in first, and then I'll hand over to Matt. I think, I mean, the first thing to say, like you said, I think the idea is how can we make our, it's creative, whatever, but how can we reduce contact as much as possible should be the main goal. So, whether that's, you know, moving to non-contact forms or getting a bit more creative around how we develop those skills for when the children are older. But then in terms of coach, I think it's just having honest conversations around it. So, like conversation so far has been on concussion as a discreet injury that can be identified there and then, and then handled by the player having however many weeks off and coming back. The conversation now needs to move more towards, well, the longer-term issues that aren't not, from our experience, and I'm not just saying this anecdotally, me and Matt have been involved in all sorts of research with coaches, athletes, a range of different sports, a range of different levels. And the general knowledge of the long-term risk is very, very low. Not a lot of people know about it. So, for example, there's something called CTE, which is chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which is, that's the real thing, right? That's the risk factor. Not a lot of people know about that or know what it is.  

I think if anybody is coaching a sport like, well, any contact sport, rugby, boxing, football, although that's changing now with the phasing out of heading, they should be aware of what CTE is, what the risk factors are, how to reduce the risk factors, and having just really open conversations with parents about that. And to an extent with children, but it's very difficult. One of these issues are around children is we can't expect children to grasp these very complex things and think about themselves in 30, 40 years time. So it really, you know, it's on adults to do that. That's why we have safeguarding policies. It's why we move into a space where coaches have an open and honest conversations about that, constantly educating themselves on it, and then reflecting that in their practice.  

And then the final thing I'll say, which came out of one of the things that me and Matt had conversations around, one of the reasons a lot of my work is pushing for policy change is because it can be really, really hard for coaches to work in isolation. So, take a coach in the UK, if it's a rugby coach, and they want to just do non-contact, and their reasons are because of safeguarding or because they're concerned about the risks. If they then do that, and they can't point to a policy to justify the decision, they're going to face loads of pressure from the parents who want their children to learn the contact skills to make sure they're not going to be as make sure they're as competitive as possible. And they're going to face pressure from other coaches in other clubs who want to adopt in the same approach. So, although there's loads that a coach can do individually, they're always going to be hamstrung until it's a flatline policy that they can refer back to. 

I think a lot of conversations me and Matt had early on is him saying that he doesn't want to coach contact to children and then having their parents tell him, well, I want you to coach them contact. And having those sort of conversations are really hard when there's not a, you know, in football now there is policy and a coach can say, well, we're not doing heading and here's why. But they don't have that in they don't have it in boxing or ice hockey. And so I think, you know, there's two levels of what coaches can do, but they're also limited by what policy guides them and what they can kind of fall back on for, I guess, justification for their actions beyond what they can just articulate themselves.  

HOST: Yeah, lots in there. And also they can, they can feed back and they can support NGBs for stuff and ask questions. So, I'm going to go to you for the last thing. What's where next for you? What? So I'm thinking for policy, that's great. But the policy needs good insight, evidence based research. Is there anything more that can be or that you are doing in this space to provide more research?  

MATTHEW: You're asking me what research I'm doing? Or what next?  

HOST: What research do you think would further support or be good to do that will help those organisations change their policies?  

MATTHEW: I mean, there continues to be more research showing that people getting brain damage from playing these sports. That will continue to come out, I guess, whilst we still have the same sports practises. And eventually, I guess, policy makers and governing bodies will have to accept that. If you read some of the more recent literature, it's kind of changing direction. Me and Jack were happy to read a paper from, was it Sport Medicine? That's recently come out where people are starting to question when should we be introducing contact? We've got our own views on that. But I think we can both say it's a step in the right direction. So yeah, just more of the same is going to come out. It will just get to a stage where it's not really going to be much of a debate anymore. And policy will change, just like how heading in kids football in the UK has changed.  

Well, thank you both very much. And, yeah, thank you. Thank you for your paper. And I hope that it does open up some good conversations with coaches and between coaches and coaches and parents and their coach educators, etc. So that we can people can certainly raise an awareness that brain injury and concussion isn't just those big, obvious impacts and the way in which you deal with those. Brilliant. Thank you both very, very much.  

JACK: Great. Can I just jump in? Anyone that is listening or read the papers, me, I won't speak for Matt, but I think Matt's the same. Always, always happy to have chats about this. Really enjoy having dialogue and conversation. Even if people don't agree with what's in the paper or what we say, we love to hear it and have conversations. So, I think our emails or contact will go up with the paper. So do get in contact, you know, for better or for worse. We always like having dialogue over these issues. And, yeah, thanks for hosting it. I hope it was a useful conversation.  

HOST: Yeah, thank you. I was going to say that we'll make sure that your contact, your professional contact details are in your bios with the paper and also some links, if you can find some other places that people can go and further explore. So, thank you both so much.  

JACK: Thank you.  

MATTHEW: Thank you.