James Hadwin’s seasonal review

An article James wrote for the programme v Middlesbrough, Saturday 4 January.

I hope everyone has had a good break over the festive period and I wish a Happy New Year to everyone involved with the club.
2024 has brought some highs and also, probabaly, more lows from both a playing and personal point of view for many involved with the club.
So many who were big characters within the club lost recently makes for a sombre mood. Our thoughts are with all those who have lost those closest to them.
From a senior rugby point of view, as a club, our annual report reads - could do much much better! After the last 4 games of last season I had hoped this would be a springboard to increased commitment to training and availability and a willingness to work hard to stay at this level after the scare at the end of last year. In all honesty this has proved to be a false hope and it’s been a very frustrating first half of the season.
The most important fact to consider is that we have not fielded the same team twice this season and continue to be faced with players who are less committed than I ever remember during my time as a player. I find this disappointing and hard to accept.
Just Prior to Christmas was a perfect example of this, v Carlisle we turned in a determined and much improved performance. Progress at last!?
The following week in our selection for the key Keswick game, a team we beat in September and needed to beat again, we faced a common issue, many players unavailable. Why, I ask myself. Some for work reasons, which is acceptable, some for family, again acceptable, others for many others reasons that in times gone by we would have been hung drawn and quartered for, and would have resulted in some kind of sanction be it a good hammering at training or a stern word. What has changed?
In addition, some players chose to go out the night prior and turn up in a state that can only be described as less than athletic. For a team that is at the bottom of the league and fighting once again to stay at this level, this isn’t acceptable to me as coach but shouldn’t be accepted by the players either. My fellow coaches and I give our Tuesday, Thursday evenings up for free and most of Saturday and we expect the lads to give it their all in return. Is this too much to ask? Perhaps.
So with a new year comes a new start, a fresh perspective and a new expectation on the players.
I feel as coaches we are doing all we can based on the commitment level of the players to train and play. Now it is up to them to prove they want and deserve to, stay at this level of rugby.
The definition of stupidity is doing the same thing and making the same mistakes over and over and expecting a different outcome. The new year brings a new emphasis on the players to stand up and take ownership of our current situation. We have new players arriving in the next couple of weeks and everyone will have to fight for their place in the squad.
We have good players who at the moment are under performing because of their lack of commitment to be better individually and work as part of the team/club. It is pretty brutal, but it is as simple as that. There is a core of players within the club that are massively committed to the cause, however, there are some that are not and take this great club, and the opportunity they have to play at this standard, for granted. Some players within our squad have the potential to play at a higher level and would encourage them to do so, but at the moment they don’t have the work ethic to do it in my opinion.
The above statement isn’t negative, it is realistic and is a challenge to the players. At the moment there is an acceptance of poor performance and losing. If this continues to be the case we will be in the Cumbria league next season (Level 7). This will mean we will win games but it’s not a standard this club should or wants to be playing at.
I hold my hands up, as head coach a lot of this no doubt falls at my feet but I can also say hand on heart that I give this role my all. A lot of my time is spent trying to work out who is available, who can train and how we can make the changes and improvements we need to without players training. We can’t coach players who don’t train. It’s a vicous circle.
In my mind I continually think - is training fun, or is it hard enough? How can we encourage people to train more? How can we get the backs moves or the overall attack I want to implement with 4 backs training or half a lineout. This isn’t coaching it’s juggling bodies and making do and it isn’t that much fun for both the committed players and the coaches if I am being completely honest.
It’s time now to fully commit and go forward positively with a real hard nosed mentality to improve and get better - we have the talent we just need the commitment and that starts today and every week from now on.