Coaching Culture with Ben Herring

Watching pro rugby on TV can make school rugby look intimidating, but the truth is far more hopeful and far more practical. We’re joined by Tim Murdy, Director of Sport at Shawnigan Lake School, to talk about how a youth rugby program becomes a place where kids feel safe, challenged, and proud. Tim explains why rugby is a powerful shared experience for younger students, especially in a boarding school setting with athletes ar...

A lot of people talk about “culture” like it’s a slogan on a wall. We wanted something more real, so I sat down with Campese Maafu, a three-time Rugby World Cup prop and 63-test Flying Fijian, to hear what actually holds teams and people together when pressure hits. For Campese, culture is values plus standards, fueled by faith and the responsibility of “upholding your name” for your family, your commu...

Winning is loud. Development is quiet. And in school rugby, the noise can crush the very kids we are trying to help. I sit down with Roddy Dean, one of Scotland’s leading schoolboy rugby coaches and longtime Director of Rugby at Merciston Castle School, to unpack what actually builds a lasting coaching culture, especially when expectations, parents, and tradition all pull in different directions.

We get into Roddy&rsqu...

A packed stadium, free entry, a brand-new team built across borders, and a cold email that ends with Northampton Saints landing in Colombo. We talk with Saabir Cader, the founder behind the Asian Pacific Lions, about how Sri Lanka rugby became the perfect home for a world-class showcase and why belief matters more than permission when you’re trying to build something that doesn’t exist yet. If you care about rugby cultu...

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 ...

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...

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 w...

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 di...

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 ...

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 shoulder...

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 joine...

“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 mys...

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...

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...

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...

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 j...

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 c...

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 o...

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...