Malaysian Rugby Coaching Competency among High Performance National Coaches

Abstract

Coaching program is a primary development setup on national coaching standard, accreditation and education with framework preparing trained coaches to produce high performance athletes. Therefore, it is important to build consensus on the national standard for rugby coaching competency in Malaysia before the preparation for comprehensive structure of qualified coaches. The aim of this study is to find information from all the Malaysian rugby union national coaches to upgrade and improve their coaching competency process for high performance team preparation. The participants are selected based on their responsibility with Malaysia high performance national team based on purposive sampling. There are six national coaches being interviewed using in-depth and semi-structured interview with open-ended question which was carried out and analyzed using ATLAS Ti v.22 with constant comparative method. Based on data collection and analysis, there are five new themes emerging in context with Malaysian coaching competency processes. The coaching competency model: i) Accreditation ii) Experience, iii) Achievement, iv) Planning, and vi) Philosophy and coaching style. There are various high performance coaching programs but the coaching model integrated into the Malaysian Rugby coaching system is yet to be found and applied. There should be a standard in terms of coaching selection so that Malaysian Rugby high performance can be implemented into the rugby coaching environment in Malaysia. It is suggested for future studies to produce a specific training module and long term development planning to improve the competency of rugby coaches in Malaysia based on the themes that have been presented in this study.