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The youngest coaches in the room: why we hand our young players the whistle
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News 25 October 2026 4 min read

The youngest coaches in the room: why we hand our young players the whistle

Junior coaching at the Matt Ratana Rugby Foundation is about more than rugby. It’s an opportunity for young people to build confidence, develop transferable skills and take ownership of their future, while making a positive difference in their community.

Junior coaches Eli and Ava are learning to lead from the inside. Here’s why that matters for them, for the kids they coach, and for the future of the game.

There’s a moment in a lot of our sessions that’s easy to miss. A group of younger children are lining up for a drill, and the person explaining it isn’t an adult. It’s a teenager who, not very long ago, was standing in that same line.

Eli and Ava are two of TackleLondon’s junior coaches, working alongside head coach Aidan Brennan. In a session they help run the drills, demonstrating each one and stepping in to support groups as they work through it. For the younger players, they’re also the people to look up to: not far off in age, already in the coaching bibs, and a clear sign of where a few years in the game can take you. They’re learning too: junior coaches can work towards coaching qualifications, and Eli is already taking courses in coaching and mental health.

Why give young people responsibility?

Because young people deserve the chance to shape their own futures, and to see what they’re capable of when someone trusts them to step up.

At The Matt Ratana Rugby Foundation, junior coaching is about more than rugby. It’s an opportunity for young people to take on responsibility, develop their confidence and discover the difference they can make to others. By helping to coach the next generation, they begin to see themselves not just as participants, but as people who have something valuable to offer their community.

Coaching gives those lessons a real-world setting. You learn to communicate clearly, adapt when things don’t go to plan, bring people together and lead by example. You learn that leadership isn’t about having all the answers; it’s about showing up, taking responsibility and helping others succeed. And when you see a younger player grow in confidence or master something they’ve been struggling with, you experience first-hand the impact you can have.

This opportunity isn’t just for young people who want to become coaches. It’s for anyone who wants to gain experience, build transferable skills, challenge themselves and give something back. Whether you’re working towards your Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, exploring a future career, looking for a positive way to spend your time or simply curious about what you could achieve, junior coaching offers a chance to learn by doing.

At the heart of this is agency: giving young people the trust, support and opportunity to make positive, constructive choices for themselves. We want them to feel empowered to decide how they spend their time, where they belong and what they want to contribute. Taking on a leadership role can be a powerful step towards that, building a sense of purpose, pride and belief in their own abilities.

As the young people involved in our programmes grow, we want to create more opportunities for them to step forward, support others and become positive role models in their communities. We’re still at the beginning of that journey, but the ambition is clear: to help young people recognise their potential, take ownership of their development and discover that they have the power to make a difference.

Giving it structure

Handing someone a whistle isn’t a pathway on its own. The pathway comes from recognising the hours, building skills over time and being clear about what comes next. At TackleLondon we’re linking junior coaching to Duke of Edinburgh volunteering, and we track progress through our impact system so every session and skill is recorded rather than forgotten. Our Coach Development and Qualifications Framework is where that route is mapped out.

That matters for the coaching workforce as much as the young coaches themselves. Every community club in the country relies on volunteers. If the person running the U10s in five years’ time is someone who first held the cones at 14, we’ve helped fix a shortage that clubs have worried about for years.

What the younger kids get

It’s not just the coaches who benefit. Children tend to listen differently to a teenager they look up to. A junior coach who’s a few years older provides something an adult can’t: living proof that someone from the same school, with the same accent, can be good at this.

What it says about the whole idea

TackleLondon runs a pathway from school sessions to community clubs. Junior coaching is where the pathway turns back on itself: young people we reached through school are now reaching the next group. That’s the closest thing to proof of concept we’ve got.

If you’re a school or club that would like to start something similar, or a young person who fancies the whistle, we’d love to hear from you.

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