THE CONCEPT AND USE OF CRITICAL INCIDENTS ANALYSIS

Rugby is a game of a series of episodes of play that commence with the re-start and end with the referee’s whistle being blown for whatever reason. The episode has an outcome, which may be to the advantage or disadvantage of the team. The outcome may be measured in terms of territory, possession or both; as well as the scoring of points.

Like all outcomes they are the product of performance, successful or unsuccessful. The difference between the two is that the outcome is something we can do little about on the practice field while the performance of the skills of the game throughout the episode is something over which we have degrees of control.

Just one point here, in a sport in which closed skills are performed a high degree of perfection can be achieved. A perfect “10” has been scored in some sports in the past.

However, in sports in which there is a contest between 2 opponents to score points against each other the skills are open skills and can seldom be performed perfectly. It is part of the skills of the game to know how to adapt these open skills to the competitive situations to achieve a greater degree of success than your opponents.

This is why we have some control, not total control.

As the episode is played out there will be a range of incidents that contribute to the outcome. Identifying these incidents is the dominant coaching skill. The skill is to replay the episode, for most coaches, in their mind, to identify the critical incident so that they know where the focus of their coaching should lie.

By identifying the critical incidents during the event the information can be communicated to the players. In the past I have recommended that the focus should be on one critical incident, the most important critical incident, so as not to overload the players information.

Given that there are around 20 episodes in each half, more in games of lesser skill, the amount of information may be sufficient within the context of the current game but more information may be needed when it comes to practicing for the next game.

The point is that it is difficult to get an order of priority when the most a particular critical incident occurs is 2-3 times. By extending the number generated by each episode the number of the most critical will stand out as there will be many more.

This is particularly important in the contemporary game because episodes are lasting a long time going through a number of phases of play and a number of turnovers before play is called to a halt.

But we have to be careful we don’t go too far as a degree is discrimination is needed here. There needs to be balance between the two needs, the needs of the current game and the needs of a week of training between games.

This accuracy of the coach’s discrimination between performance in one incident and another is based on 2 things:

Rugby knowledge and coaching intuition.

The Pareto/80:20 Principle.

Rugby knowledge and coaching intuition:

During a game it is hard to be comprehensive, to cover everything. Rugby knowledge and intuition make the accuracy of the trained coach very high in recalling the episode and identifying what incidents may be critical and which one is the most critical. Over the years coaches accumulate a bank of intuitive knowledge in their sub-conscious that can be drawn on.

In life generally this frequently occurs. We are able to react to situations we are frequently exposed to intuitively with great accuracy Everything from crossing the road without looking “right, left and right again” to a surgeon’s reaction to the unexpected in an operation, creating a life threatening situation, require quick thinking based on intuition that has a high degree of accuracy.

In our trade, which is the coaching of rugby, quick thinking during a game, in particular, is essential if we want to be successful. Long exposure to the game and it’s mode of play provides coaches with a bank of information, from which our intuition can draw information to make an accurate enough decision to be successful. Come to think of it, this equally applies to players. From all the cues that are being fed into the player’s brain they must select the best one for the situation.

This enables the coach to focus on the most important things when developing a team profile and the steps that follow.

Initially coaches will have great accuracy in the things that happen frequently but eventually they will be accurate in those that occur infrequently. In addition reference needs to be made to the teams checklists in particular their patterns of play and game plan for the current game.

This enables the coach to focus on performance not outcomes as something can be done about performance as explained above.

The Pareto/80:20 Principle:

We now need to decide on how many of these incidents are enough for the team’s training to address the important issues.

To do this I would put forward that the Pareto/80:20 Principle gives us a guide.

The principle states that in many aspects of life 80% of the outcomes/results are determined by 20% of the performances/tasks. This means that the outcome of each principle can be achieved by performing 20% of the actions successfully.

We are now in a position of using the major limiting factor of our coaching, which is time, more successfully because the return from focusing on the 20% gives us a great return. Implied in this is the assumption that the coach is able to prioritize accurately to focus on the 20%.

Clearly it is not worthwhile going beyond this to the 80% of outcomes because the return is so much less.

In this way we solve the problem of doing many things superficially. We are able to focus on practicing a smaller number of things well.

Maybe all I have done is formalize what coaches currently do informally without any structure.

It is in this way that “best practice” is made accessible to all coaches and it may enable coaches who do this in their sub-conscious to know it is a common practice from which they may fine-tune what they are doing.

To provide greater rigor to the process the following questions may provide logical steps as part of the process:

Is your team in attack or defence?

What were the critical incident(s) for each episode?

For each incident what was the player’s functional role?

For each role what were the functional role’s key factors?

Below is a simple table into which information can be entered if the exercise is used for team analysis after the game.

Note:

The critical incident and the key factor may be one and the same.

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