Coaching Culture with Ben Herring

A captain’s job gets real when the message is hard and the stakes are higher than one person’s pride. Jamie Henry joins us to talk about the uncomfortable side of professional rugby: selection, disappointment, and the quiet way a results-driven environment can make players feel like decisions are personal. We dig into what actually earns respect inside strong teams, why “no one is bigger than the team” only works when it shows up in daily behavior, and how leaders keep trust intact when not everyone gets what they want. 

Jamie’s story runs through Japanese rugby cultu...

What if the strongest teams aren’t built by hype, slogans, or “high performance” talk, but by a few clear rituals everyone can count on? I sit down with Dave Askew, deputy principal and First XV coach at Auckland Grammar School, to get a behind-the-scenes look at how one of New Zealand’s most storied schoolboy rugby programs builds culture that holds up under pressure.

We talk about the daily assembly as the “big hall” that creates belonging, recognition, and a shared start line for 2,000-plus boys. Dave explains why predictability and tradition matter, especially for students who don’t ha...

Rugby can fill a stadium. Culture can shape a life. We sit down with Sean Erasmus, head coach at Paul Boys High School, to unpack what it takes to build a values-led rugby program inside one of the most tradition-heavy environments in the world. His core idea is simple and demanding: culture is a living thing, and if we do not feed it and prune it every day, it drifts into something we never intended.

We get specific about what that looks like with schoolboys who face modern pressure that previous generations never had to carry: social...

The Ranfurly Shield isn’t just a trophy. It’s a pressure cooker that turns every home match into a final, pulls entire towns into the story, and asks players to carry something heavier than a scoreboard. After Northland’s first Shield win since 1978, head coach Ryan Martin joins me to explain how his group handled the moment and why the celebration and the responsibility can actually fuel performance instead of distracting from it.

We dig into Ryan’s simple coaching framework for big games: confidence equals belief times evidence. Belief comes from the language you use and the...

If someone had to “explain” your culture to a new hire, would it fall apart the moment pressure hits? Ross Neal joins us to get brutally practical about what culture actually is: what you do and how you do it, so clear that a person could sit in your environment for a week and tell the truth about it. From pro rugby locker rooms to corporate leadership teams, Ross shows how culture is built in the small moments leaders leak through mood, reactions, and what they choose to reward.

We dig into the research-backed behaviors that separate high...

A championship season can tempt coaches to talk only about tactics, but the real story sits in the spaces between school, sport, and growing up. We sit down with Tim Rapp, head coach of Newington College First XV and Australia U16 head coach, to unpack how a winning schoolboy rugby program is built on values, relationships, and the daily experience players have when they arrive at 3:40 pm carrying the rest of life on their shoulders. 

We get practical about coaching culture: why “the last classroom of the day” matters, how your tone can either pull kids back into...

You can spot a coach on the sideline in seconds. What’s harder to see is everything they carry home afterward: the player who’s struggling, the conversation they should have handled better, the pressure from parents or committees, the fear of judgment, and the constant need to stay calm for everyone else. That hidden weight has a name, and once you name it, you can finally do something about it.

We’re joined by Stu Edwards, newly appointed Finland head coach and author of The Invisible Load, based on his first-class honors research into stress factors and me...

“Culture” is the most overused word in sport, and we’ve both heard it used as a lazy explanation for everything from blowout losses to surprise championships. So we put the uncomfortable question on the table with Ben Darwin from Game Line Analytics: is culture a load of crap, or is it just misunderstood? What follows is a grounded, data-informed look at what culture actually looks like when you strip away the mystique and focus on behaviors you can see, coach, and repeat.

We dig into normative behaviors and why they’re often mistaken for some special team aur...

You can know the “right” answer as a coach and still miss the point if your environment pushes people in the wrong direction. That’s the thread we pull on with Al Rogers, who spent nine years as an All Blacks analyst during a golden run, then moved into coaching across Super Rugby, international rugby, and Japan. We get honest about what actually changes performance: not a wall of slogans or a spreadsheet of stats, but the daily culture you create and the behaviors you reinforce when things get hard.

We start with a simple coaching habit that m...

The hottest debate in any team sport is selection, and we get why it drives people crazy. From the stands, it looks like a simple list of the most talented players. From the coach’s seat, it’s risk management, culture building, and performance under pressure all rolled into one call. That’s the contrarian idea we’re unpacking: selection isn’t about picking the best players, it’s about picking the best team.

We walk through three practical filters that shape real coaching decisions. First is trust: can we count on you to prepare, do the little thing...

Pressure doesn’t usually change a coach with one big blow. It changes you slowly, one compromise at a time, until the season ends and you realize you’ve been walking around in fog. Joey Mongalo joins us for a contrarian round of questions on coaching culture and leadership, starting with a deceptively simple one: are holidays just as important as seasons? From tornado-speed weekly cycles to the need for pockets of quiet, we talk rest and recovery as a performance skill, not a reward you earn after you’re already depleted.

From there we get into player...

A Champions Cup-winning rugby attack coach who never played professional rugby should not make sense and that’s exactly why Noel McNamara’s story matters. We sit with the uncomfortable truth that the “perfect CV” is often overrated, and the real separator is how you think when an opportunity is risky, unglamorous, or confusing to everyone around you.

We dig into what stood out most from Noel’s journey: a very low fear of failure and a willingness to say yes early. One move leads to the next, from New Zealand to South Africa to France, and suddenly t...

Winning a major trophy is supposed to be the moment, but Noel McNamara doesn’t romanticize it. He explains why a title can feel like relief for ten minutes, and why the harder, more meaningful work starts immediately after: rebuilding energy, sharpening clarity, and chasing improvement in a world where success keeps moving further away the moment you get close. If you coach rugby, lead a team, or care about high-performance culture, this is a grounded look at what it takes to stay ahead without burning out. 

We get practical about coaching leadership and player ownership. Noel sha...

Some teams win because they have better players. Leicester Tigers, at their best, won because they had a culture that could survive anything, including brutal training, relentless internal competition, and the pressure of living up to an identity everyone could see from the stands.

We sit down with Geordan Murphy, Leicester player, captain, coach, and senior leader across 23 years at the club. Geordan  tells the story of arriving from Ireland on what was supposed to be a three week trial, then being thrown straight into first team training with Lions and internationals. We dig into what made t...

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Most teams don’t lose because they lack information. They lose because pressure hijacks attention, connection, and decision making. Craig White joins us to unpack a simple truth that too many coaches miss: your team feels your nervous system before they hear your message, and what you model becomes the culture.

We dig into conscious leadership and the difference between regulated and dysregulated coaching. Craig breaks down the “to me, by me, through me, as me” framework, why victim language spreads fast in staff rooms, and how a grounded coach can deliver hard feedback without becoming unsafe. We als...

Japan has a way of exposing your coaching habits in seconds. The standards feel sharper, the respect is unmistakable, and the smallest details suddenly matter more than your favorite playbook. We’re joined by Matt Cobain to unpack why the Elite Coaches Tour of Japan is built to accelerate rugby coaching development through immersion, not theory.

We dig into what coaches actually gain from stepping into Japan rugby culture: learning to lead in a different context, seeing how relationships get built before tactics, and observing environments where discipline and preparation are baked into daily life. Matt shares wh...

A 60-5 final score makes headlines, but the real story is what has to be true inside a team for that kind of performance to show up when it matters most. We’re joined by Tom Kinley, General Manager of the Hurricanes, to break down the culture systems and leadership habits that turn a talented roster into a connected, resilient, high-performing group.

We dig into how Tom defines team culture as shared patterns of thinking and behavior, and why the “intangible” edge is often the difference between evenly matched sides. Tom shares the Hurricanes’ everyday standards that build be...

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 down the moments that matter most, especially when a player is moving down the lineup. Our simple rule: talk...

Ever wonder why some teams click faster, learn quicker, and bounce back stronger? We unpack the real levers behind high performance—where data sharpens intuition, language creates buy-in, and framing turns meetings into movement. With performance strategist and developmental coach John Dams, we trace his path from early rugby roles to shaping elite environments, pulling out lessons any coach or leader can use tomorrow.

We dig into the mindset side first: emotional intelligence as a practical coaching skill. John breaks down the four controllables—what you say, think, do, and feel—and shows how they anchor tough moment...

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 families and arrive with extraordinary talent but limited exposure to weights, nutrition, or film study. Nem...

Coaching kids is one thing. Coaching your own child can feel like stepping onto a field where every word carries twice the weight. I’ve been thinking about why so many coaches avoid coaching their son or daughter, even when they love the sport, and I’ve come to a simple reframe: the real question isn’t “why is my kid hard to coach?” It’s “what changes in me when the athlete is someone I love?”

I walk through three shifts that quietly sabotage parent coaching. First, we stop seeing the child and start seeing the future, which tu...

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 is doing to turn a repu...

A small moment can change an athlete more than a big speech ever will. We’re digging into the idea of “little hooks” the tiny wins, cues, and shared moments that get players latched onto learning and pulling themselves forward.

We start with a simple family story: an alphabet game where an eight-year-old learns a country for every letter. The real magic isn’t the trivia. It’s what happens after he feels competent. He starts lighting up when he hears new country names, asking questions, looking at maps, and chasing more knowledge on his own. That’s the coachi...

What does it take for a fully amateur national team to punch above its weight and chase top-30 ambitions? We unpack Sweden’s rise with head coach Alex Laybourne, tracing a bold shift from “show up and play” to a no-excuses culture where standards, clarity, and innovation fuel results. From the outside, it looks improbable: limited budget, a shallow depth chart, and COVID-era hurdles. Inside, it’s a masterclass in identity, ownership, and doing more with less.

We start with culture as lived behavior—how players welcome, challenge, and hold each other to account—and why psychological safety is th...

If you’ve ever walked into a team review wondering which clip will make you look stupid, you already know how confidence gets crushed. We talk about coaching confidence through the most common tool coaches use and misuse: feedback. When reviews become a public list of everything that went wrong, players don’t just feel corrected, they feel exposed. And once fear shows up, learning slows down, decision-making tightens, and team culture quietly deteriorates.

We unpack why so many coaches default to negative film sessions and how it often acts like a safety blanket: “I’ve told them.” B...

If “culture” makes your eyes glaze over, try this: design the environment and make excellence a habit. That’s the heartbeat of our conversation with international head coach Gary Gold, who has led in South Africa, England, Japan, and the U.S. We dig into what truly differentiates winning clubs when talent is close—and why it’s rarely another page in the playbook. Gary reframes culture as daily, observable behaviors anyone can own, from chasing a kick to resetting your attitude after a loss. He shows how to reverse engineer a team’s identity—honoring deep local heritage in a town club...

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Culture isn’t a slogan; it’s the air your team breathes. With Filo Tiatia, iconic loose forward turned pro coach across New Zealand, Japan, and Wales—we unpack how identity, empathy, and non-negotiable standards create environments where people feel safe, stretched, and proud of how they do things here. From Samoan and Japanese customs to the daily rituals inside a professional club, Filo shows why clarity of behavior and belonging beats hype every time.

We dig into the hardest pivot a coach can make: trading ego for ears. Filo admits he once ignored feedback and paid the pr...

Elite rugby loves to talk about high performance, but the uncomfortable question is simpler: what happens when the clubs empty out? We dig into the community game and why participation is the true performance metric that quietly decides a nation’s future. With a powerful snippet from David Nusafora, we unpack the idea that high performance can’t operate in isolation and that the relationship between performance and participation has to stay healthy for both sides to win.

From there, we head to a place where rugby is on a genuine upward tick: Argentina. Felipe Contempomi shares what...

Most teams say they want a great culture. Far fewer leaders can explain what culture looks like on a random Tuesday, or how to build it when pressure is high and everyone is watching the scoreboard. We sit down with David Nucifora, a longtime performance director and high performance leader across international rugby, to get concrete about what actually moves performance: daily behaviors, clear standards, and leaders who stay close enough to the work to feel what’s really going on.

We dig into a deceptively simple idea: don’t consume yourself with bureaucracy. David explains why he c...

The most dangerous trap for a coach is thinking leadership is a clean job. It isn’t. Rugby coaching lives in the arena: the training ground when energy is flat, the change room when emotions run high, and game day when every decision gets judged in real time. That’s why we come back to Theodore Roosevelt’s “The Man in the Arena,” a short piece of language that hits hardest when you need it most.

We listen to the poem and then pull out three takeaways built for coaches, captains, and anyone responsible for standards. First, team cultu...

Forget the posters. Scott Johnson, one of rugby’s most widely traveled coaches, breaks down culture as the simple, repeatable ways we do things—and the accountability that keeps them real. We explore why “team as family” sets people up to fail, how buzzwords like honesty can backfire, and why deeds and shared language matter more than slogans. Scott’s stories move from national team pressure to rebuilding environments, revealing how small margins can skew narratives while the real work happens in habits, standards, and clarity.

We dive into the art of creating one language across diverse staff and...

A single mistake can hijack an entire training session. We’ve both seen it: a young player drops a ball, throws a pass behind, misses a read and then spends the next 20 minutes replaying it in their head. Confidence dips, choices get slower, and the game stops feeling fun. That’s why we’re digging into mental resilience and mental strength through a surprisingly simple lens: the body can help the mind reset. 

We pull a key idea from modern sports psychology and coaching culture: physical practices underpin mental practices. If you try to outthink overthinking, you usually...

The opening punch lands fast: learn how to control yourself or someone will control you. From there, we pull a thread that runs from Roman drill fields to packed terraces—how rugby evolved as organized collision, how the ball operates as a symbol of authority, and why our modern pursuit of power and pace may be steering the sport into dangerous territory. Jedi brings a provocative thesis: culture is what you do whether you win or lose, not the mask you wear for the cameras. If that feels uncomfortable, good—it should.

We dig into boozing as deco...

One careless comment can shrink a player for months. One intentional conversation can change a career. That’s the tension at the heart of leadership and it’s exactly where Kieran Read goes with us. From describing himself as a shy kid who didn’t speak up, Kieran walks through how he grew into captaining the All Blacks, and what that journey teaches anyone trying to build a stronger team culture at work or in sport. 

We get specific about what “culture” actually is: the behaviors you tolerate, the standards you model, and the small interactions that new people...

What really builds culture when results, bodies, and time are under pressure? We sit down with Joe Launchbury—70-cap England lock, longtime Wasps leader, and current Harlequin—to unpack how simple behaviors, sharp communication, and quiet ownership become competitive edges. Joe’s definition of culture is disarmingly clear: do what you said you would do, through good and bad. From coffee cups and punctuality to learning your role, he shows how small standards compound into trust—and how trust becomes performance in a sport of tiny margins.

Joe opens up about evolving from workhorse lock to senior statesma...

A team loses a final. The microphone shows up. Most leaders reach for explanations, soft excuses, or someone to blame. We don’t. We play a short, stunning post-game interview from Gav Hickey, who coaches the Naval Academy in the United States, and we slow it down to hear what it reveals about real leadership, coaching culture, and what your players learn from your voice.

Gav’s message is all pride and perspective: he talks about the character of his players, the joy of spending time together, and the idea that the “ultimate prize” isn’t only a scoreboa...

What makes a team’s culture visible when the pressure is highest? We sit down with Ospreys head coach Mark Jones to unpack the daily habits, leadership handoffs, and language choices that turn values into actions. From Neath’s valley steel to Swansea’s coastal ease, Mark traces how a region’s identity shapes a squad’s edge—and why the first job of a head coach is to confirm the group still believes in the same things you do.

Mark takes us inside the warm-up zone where music, micro-chats, and body language reveal readiness long before kickoff. He...

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Culture isn’t a poster on the wall. It’s what your team does when nobody is watching, when someone gets dropped, and when the trip gets uncomfortable. I’m joined by Wallabies legend and former Rugby Australia president Tony Shaw to get practical about what team culture really is, how leadership actually works inside a squad, and why “how we do things around here” beats any fancy mission statement.<...