Dr Camilla Knight and her research team at Swansea University spent years looking into how parents interact with their children in a sporting context. Here’s how their findings can help you work more effectively with the parents around you.
Parents are too often seen as the problem, not the solution. That’s the impression held by plenty of coaches, who see parental interference as a source of unwanted aggravation for themselves and, by extension, their players.
More recent research tells a different story and it’s the players themselves telling it. The RFU, increasingly conscious of player welfare, particularly within their elite pathways, brought in Dr Camilla Knight, associate professor in Sport Science at Swansea University, to look into it properly.
Her team was given rare, in-depth access to players, parents and coaches at the Wellington Festival, which brings together around 420 players from 14 Premiership academies. For researchers, it’s close to a goldmine, a huge, focused dataset all gathered in one place.
Start with the rugby journey
In informal group settings, players and later parents, coaches, teachers and academy staff were asked to talk through their rugby journeys so far.
“It’s honest, and it’s relaxed because it’s in a group,” says Dr Knight. “The players were happy to open up and share stories. They talked about other parents’ behaviours too, which let them relate their own experiences indirectly. Everything was kept confidential. We wanted to find out who had helped them, and what might have derailed them along the way.”
“There was a huge amount of data to work through. Our first focus was understanding the parents’ role in a player’s rugby life. At a young age, players lean heavily on their parents. As a player begins to realise their own potential, they start listening more to peers and coaches — but crucially, parents remain their main source of support throughout.”
Mums and dads — different conversations
“The players told us they tended to go to dad for technical advice and mum for emotional support. It was a genuinely gendered pattern, and it’s backed up by our wider research on parental involvement in Wales.
“Looking at parents’ own experiences of supporting their children in rugby, we see further differences between mothers and fathers. Mothers tend to raise far more concerns about injury, while fathers, often having played themselves, are more likely to understand the physical outcomes of collision.”
The message running through this research, and the whole approach behind it, is that every participant in the game needs to keep talking to each other. Each stakeholder is pulled in multiple directions at once. It’s genuinely tough on a sixteen-year-old player being asked to weigh up their playing loyalties, while a parent is looking out for their son or daughter, and a coach is trying to develop the player in front of them.
“It was interesting that parents often helped players balance demands and expectations. Players liked knowing their parents wanted them to do well. But if a coach was too pushy, the parent could act as a buffer, easing that pressure. As players get older, they tend to want their parents to be a little less vocal — probably as peers and coaches start to carry more influence.”
Coaches learning more
“We recognise that parents are trying to do the right thing. They’ll make mistakes, and won’t always know what to do. The players recognise that too but understanding that the intention is well-meaning matters enormously.
“Coaches need to genuinely embrace parents. If you’re giving players a message about leadership, for instance, parents need to know about it too, so they can reinforce it at home. Otherwise that message simply gets lost.
“We should also be supporting parents through the difficult conversations that inevitably come up. If they’ve already thought through the possible answers, it’s far easier for them to respond well to things like being dropped or getting injured.”
While this particular research focused on the academy game, Dr Knight is clear it applies just as well at every level. “We need to up-skill parents with better information. Initially that’s about the pathway itself. Beyond that, it’s about using the game to help build good people. Let parents know what you’re doing as a coach, so it can be reinforced at home and help them understand how to support their child’s emotional needs too.”
Key takeaways
Dr Knight is quick to point out there’s still a huge amount of data left to analyse on other relationships within the game. From a coach’s perspective, though, the key takeaways so far are:
- Players rely heavily on their parents — don’t push away a key part of a player’s support system.
- Parents genuinely want to do the right thing. Help them see what they can do, and support them in doing it.
- Share the messages you’re giving players with their parents too, so they can be reinforced at home.
Dan is editor of Rugby Coach Weekly. A former player at Bath and Bristol, he has coached international women’s, regional and district rugby, as well as his son’s club team from Under 6s through to Under 16s. Dan is also a Content Champion with Connected Coaches. You can follow him on Twitter/X: @dan_cottrell
