Coaching Culture with Ben Herring

Getting selection wrong isn’t only about who you pick. It’s about how you tell people. We dig into one of the most uncomfortable parts of coaching: delivering news that changes an athlete’s week, their confidence, and sometimes their future. Whether you coach school teams, club sports, or high-performance environments, we make the case that face-to-face communication still beats texts, calls, and “finding out in the meeting” because humans are wired for connection, tone, and intent. We break...

What happens when a record-setting, globe-trotting winger trades the try line for a whiteboard? We sit down with Nems to explore how he’s building the Fijian Drua development pathway with a people-first approach that still demands edge. From Leicester’s cold logic of the kicking game to the Crusaders’ obsession with nailing roles, he unpacks the methods that actually travel—and the ones that don’t. We get honest about what it takes to coach in Fiji, where players often support entire familie...

Ever been told to start at zero? Joe Rokocoko has—and he calls it the sentence that rebuilt his standards, his respect, and his career. From a Fijian village to Parisian match nights, Joe opens up about the unseen work behind greatness: how culture lives like a village, why tone matters more than volume, and what it takes to make the dark zone feel like home. We go deep on the soul of French rugby—why stadiums are packed, how small towns treat game day as a family event, and what Racing 92 i...