England coach Eddie Jones says coaches face an increasing challenge to get today’s generation of players to learn from videos and appreciate the finer aspects of the game.
The Telegraph reported that Jones was speaking to England high-performance director and former Italy coach Conor O’Shea in a new podcast series launched on Tuesday.
During the podcast, Jones revealed that one of the major obstacles he has encountered lately is getting players with shortening attention spans to do proper analysis.
‘I was having a chat with a young player this week and I asked him to watch [another] player,’ Jones said. ‘He rang me back an hour later and said: “I’m ready to talk about it”. I said: “You couldn’t have watched that player.”
‘I think one of the things that is an important skill for coaches now is teaching players to actually watch the game because we’re coming into a YouTube generation and they just watch highlights – they don’t watch the nuances of the game.
‘Particularly when you’re teaching the players who are going to be your most important players, your decision-making players, their ability to understand the nuances of the game [is important].
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‘I’ve just rewatched our Six Nations games this week and, in every game, I’ve picked up three or four new things that I hadn’t seen before that could, potentially, be really important going forward.
‘One of the things that players aren’t good at now – and, again, a lot of it is the way they are educated – is picking up the momentum within the game. They can’t feel it in the game. They just tend to play the game.’
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