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Coaching Culture with Ben Herring is your weekly deep-dive into the often-overlooked “softer skills” of coaching—cultural innovation, communication, empathy, leadership, dealing with stress, and motivation. Each episode features candid conversations with the world’s top international rugby coaches, who share the personal stories and intangible insights behind their winning cultures, and too their biggest failures and learnings from them. This is where X’s and O’s meet heart and soul, empowering coaches at every level to foster authentic connections, inspire their teams, and elevate their own coaching craft. If you believe that the real gold in rugby lies beyond the scoreboard, Coaching Culture is the podcast for you.
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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...
If you would like to get on this tour: https://gullivers.com.au/product/wallabiesvspumas-argentina-tour-2026/?utm_source=partnername&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_campaign=CoachingCulture_Podcast_8April 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 ...
What if passion isn’t the finish line but the fuel—and only excellence keeps the engine from overheating? We sit down with Hall of Famer and Argentina head coach Felipe Contepomi to unpack a coaching philosophy that’s as rigorous as it is human: high standards matched with high support. From Buenos Aires to the global stage, Felipe explains how the Pumas preserve their Latin fire while adopting the precision and discipline that turn emotion into execution. We trace his journey from captain t...
The fastest way to change a team’s mood might be sitting right on the gym wall: the speaker. We get into a simple coaching decision that quietly shapes everything that follows training effort, energy, and unity. When anyone can grab the iPad and throw on whatever track they feel like, the room drifts. But when the music matches the purpose of the session, it becomes a cue. Just like calm sound belongs in yoga, high-intensity gym music can help rugby players switch on, lift hard, and move with...
What if online coaching didn’t just deliver drills but built a real sense of belonging? We sit down with Ben John—ex-Ospreys center and the force behind The Rugby Trainer—to explore how a lockdown idea became a global coaching platform that helps players love the craft, master the details, and feel part of something bigger than themselves. Ben shares the simple cornerstone of his method: a ten-minute habit and a skill flywheel. Players work a focused skill alone, try it at team training, the...
Watching kids train can tell you everything about a coaching environment in minutes. Are they going through the motions, or are they lit up with purpose? We share a small, practical idea that creates a huge shift in youth rugby coaching: stop leaving parents on the sideline and bring them onto the field as part of the session. After seeing a junior team in Sydney’s inner west learn tackling technique by tackling their own dads, we break down why it worked so well, how it boosted confidence, a...
Winning teams aren’t built on slogans. They’re built on agreed standards lived every day, and Greg Cooper shows how to get there with clarity, compassion, and competitive edge. From record points as a player to head coaching across New Zealand, Japan, France, and the USA, Greg walks us through the culture mechanics that actually move the needle: listening first, understanding the region and its history, then building a leadership layer of “connectors” who represent workers, pros, imports, and...
Pressure doesn’t have to create panic. Sometimes it can create your best performance, if you coach the week the right way. Today we reflect on two powerful lessons from Sam Vesty, head coach of Northampton Saints, shared in our new release How to Be a Great Coach: Lessons from the World’s Best Coaches, Volume 2. If you lead a team, coach athletes, or manage people in high-stakes moments, these ideas translate fast. First, we unpack “joy and clarity” as a finals-week strategy. Sam’s goal is f...
Purpose isn’t a slogan at Navy Rugby; it’s the engine. We sit down with head coach Gavin Hickey to trace his journey from Ireland and Leicester to Annapolis, where a career-ending injury became the start of purpose-driven coaching. Gavin opens the doors to a culture that welcomes spouses and kids, treats athletes like “another set of our children,” and uses rugby to develop decision-making under pressure—the very skill midshipmen will rely on in the fleet. Across this conversation, we unpack...
Pressure makes culture visible. With Matt O’Connor, we go inside elite rugby environments to show how trust, standards, and brutally honest conversations turn potential into performance. Matt’s coached at Kubota, the Brumbies, Leicester Tigers, Leinster, and the Queensland Reds, and he draws a sharp line between glossy values and the gritty, day-to-day actions that actually win games. We talk about social capital as the foundation for candor: when motives are team first and ego stays out, pl...
A quiet architect just left the building—and the story behind his work is a masterclass in leadership. We take a clear-eyed look at Chris Lendrum’s two decades inside New Zealand Rugby, showing how a behind-the-scenes operator shaped player pathways, stabilized competitions, and helped elevate the Black Ferns with a strategy equal parts rigor and heart. This is a journey through culture you can feel the moment you walk in, and performance that holds an edge without losing its humanity. We sh...
What does it take for a national team with little budget and less infrastructure to climb from 71st to 40th in the world? We sit down with Stu Woodhouse to unpack a decade leading the Philippines—where family, identity, and bravery weren’t slogans but the spine of performance. This is a story of players scattered across the globe, many who never felt “Filipino enough,” finding home in a jersey and purpose in each other. It began with connection before correction: rookies and veterans sharing ...
Add to the research here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeEaFJl2Iks5RDGq93lTXyOv3RS5SoNJsibRPVWytiQgSWarg/viewform?pli=1 What if the biggest performance edge your team is missing is the well-being of the person leading it? We sit down with Stuart Edwards—defense coach for Finland and former police officer—who’s conducting one of the first deep academic dives into stress, burnout, and support systems for rugby coaches. From community volunteers to pro environments, the patterns are ...
What do you do when the scoreboard won’t budge? We sit down with Cambridge head coach Craig Newby for an unfiltered look at leadership, culture, and performance in the middle of a 14-game winless run—and why this stretch might be the most rewarding of his career. Craig breaks down the simple, sturdy framework that keeps his team aligned: “Fit, Tight, Fight” as non-negotiable standards, and three big rocks—set piece, transition, and collisions—that shape every meeting, practice plan, and revie...
What if the fastest way to a stronger culture isn’t a better speech but a better session plan? We take a hard look at Gordon Tietjens’ legendary methods with the All Blacks Sevens and unpack why brutal fitness, unbendable standards, and purpose‑driven training turned talent into titles—and teammates into family. We start with the heart of Tietjens’ philosophy: the harder you work together, the closer you become. In sevens, effort is public and undeniable—everyone sees the chase, the clean, t...
What if the hardest session you’ve ever done became the moment your team truly bonded? We sit down with Sir Gordon Tietjens, the architect of All Blacks Sevens dominance, to unpack a culture built on honesty, humility, discipline, and relentless work—and why those values still win when talent alone can’t. Tietjens takes us inside his selection philosophy, revealing why character outruns hype in a sport decided by inches. He breaks down his traffic‑light model—greens who self‑drive, yellows w...
Pressure isn’t a detour in coaching—it’s the road itself. We open up about the weight leaders carry, from constant decision-making to public scrutiny, and why stress doesn’t signal failure but commitment. Instead of wishing problems away, we talk about building the muscle to walk through them, drawing on research-backed ideas about process-focused mindset shifts that shorten the emotional downtime after hard calls and tough losses. From there, we get practical. We lay out how to build a clea...
Ever feel like your work is judged on the tiniest slice of time while everything that matters happens in the shadows? We sit down with Sharks coach and leadership consultant Joey Mongalo to unpack how identity, conviction, and a clear model help leaders thrive under pressure—on the field and in the boardroom. We start with the uncomfortable truth: people judge coaches on 80 minutes. Joey explains how he anchors himself by revisiting his track record to counter noise with facts, then shows wh...
A surgeon’s simple habit changed the way we coach. We dig into how the first and last moments of any experience anchor the emotion, memory, and meaning people carry forward—and how that insight can turn ordinary sessions into powerful learning events. Starting from an unexpected colonoscopy analogy, we translate a soft start and a calm finish into practical tools for rugby and any team environment. We walk through three levels of application. At the season level, we show how a strong opening...
A late-night training, a tired team, and a coach who missed the real story—that’s where everything changed. Andre Petorius shares how a single moment of misread effort led him to apologize, “break the chain” of how he was coached, and build a people-first approach anchored in three words: understand and assist. We dive into a definition you’ll remember long after the episode ends: culture as your team’s immune system. Andre shows how small daily behaviors—inviting young players into extras, ...
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