Former professional players helping keep the scrums up with Toki Scrum Sessions Course

This week, Club Rugby sat down with Marist St Pat’s Coaching Development Officer, Kas Lealamanua (above left, with Toki Service's Jacob Ellison), to discuss his work with the Wellington based Sports company "Toki Services". 

Many Wellingtonians will know Kas as a stalwart MSP player, winning five Jubilee Cups over the years and having clocked up a very impressive career representing the Wellington Lions and Hawke’s Bay provincial sides and also plying his trade overseas for English club Coventry and French club Biarritz. His highest honour of course was playing for Manu Samoa and from 2000 to 20007. 

Club Rugby had a great discussion with Kas about his playing days and the new "Toki Scrum Sessions course" he's delivering across New Zealand and also looking to take his coaching knowledge overseas. 

So Kas how did the Toki Scrum Sessions courses come about?

Since retiring from professional rugby I've been really keen to help the next generation of forwards with scrummaging. It’s such a hard area to coach (being a coach) because during the week you only really have 1-2 hours twice a week with your side and it's hard to cover this as a coach but it's such a key area of the game. 

Joe Fiu (also Poneke’s CDO) approached me and said "What are you waiting for? Let’s put something together and try it out through our company Toki". Joe and Jake have formed Toki Service, a sports company which is looking at coach & player development, international exchanges and tours, leadership and mentoring, skills based camps. At the moment it's quite rugby based but they eventually want open up to other sports such as netball and basketball. It's the perfect fit for me 1. They're good mates, 2. A lot of what they’re trying to do is quite broad and really exciting. 

So I sat down with Jacob (Ellison, also Norths CDO) who is a partner in Toki and we identified areas of front row coaching that are really important but hard to cover because of time constraints we face every day in the amateur game (juniors, college and club rugby). From there the scrum sessions came about after talking to a few people in the Wellington Rugby community space about sharing the knowledge and experiences we have had as players and providing a coaching session to allow front rowers to develop in their trade and to pass on our experiences/knowledge we have learned through our playing careers.

What sort of areas of the scrums do you cover in these scrum sessions? 

In the sessions we cover the fundamentals of Scrummaging for the front-row. 

Safety is a big part of the session, making sure the players we work with understand what is required to be safe in a scrum. We also cover technique and understanding the strong pushing position to enable them to be effective in their core role.  

Part of the course we also do a bit of Front-row conditioning, but it's not your normal weights conditioning as you may see in everyday training which is vital, but we try give other simple conditioning techniques with bands, body weights or weighted extras that a front rower can add onto their current programmes their coaches or trainers may have for them. the idea there is that if players can get into the habit of doing the exercises for just 10 minutes or so, it'll go a long way in assisting them when it comes scrum time. 

What sort of training do you see front rowers do now that you believe could do with a bit more improvement? Or is there a certain area you think current players should focus on more? 

Yes, back when I was playing in a scrum it was more about winning the engagement. The team that won the HIT usually would have the dominant scrum. Nowadays it more around technique and being able to maintain that strong pushing position. Also scrummaging today is about patience and being able to absorb the pressure to reload and push back. I played during the years where we had no specific coaches for this area, it was basically go out there and learn as you go which was okay back then but it's fair to say for a lot of us it's taken its toll on our bodies. 

What are the most important areas in the front row you both see needs the most attention?

Being able to maintain a strong pushing position and working as an eight. There's the perception out there that only the front row need to learn proper scrum technique, but if you have locks that know how to push with proper force and technique, combined with your lousies, AND your front row knowing how to manage the weight (push) from your pack and the opposing pack, tick all of those boxes then you'll see how much more efficient your scrums will be. 

What is the next goal for the scrum sessions? Are you able to run camps around the country? 

We want to pass the knowledge onto our local community first which makes sense, but one goal we are looking at is to run camps around the country (New Zealand) and possibly overseas. 

Where does most of your content come from? Any other coaching courses or people you've drawn inspiration from? 

Past experience is the main one, but as said before scrums have changed since I was playing (the rules). Learning from the professional coaches we have in NZ like Mike and Dan Cron is a big one. 

Sounds like the coaching community likes to share ideas, are the courses for players only? 

No way, it's open to all coaches too if they can make it, it's the perfect time to share knowledge and up skills both ways which is key about rugby, no one knows it all it's great to share around what works for some may also help others. Hurricanes scrum coach Dan Cron always says, the more people out there helping others teach scrum technique the better the game is for everyone, and I definitely agree with that.

Coaches will have their own ways to help give their side the advantage in the scrums or across the game in general, but the mere basics or a scrum doesn't change for any side like the body position of your players and focussing on your core strength. 

When are you running the next course and what age bracket are able to attend?

We're running the next course on 18 and 19 April, two hours both days in the mornings. It's open to all age brackets but students will most likely be able to attend the times (9am to 11am) during their term break. 

For more information about the scrum courses or more about Toki Services follow them on via their Twitter and Instagram handles @TokiServices or click through to their facebook page on the link below:

https://www.facebook.com/tokiservices/