The secret to Quins' success in 2021

[InBetweenWasp]

Ok, success is perhaps over-playing it as they haven't won anything (yet).  But thought this article from The Telegraph was really interesting:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/rugby-union/2021/06/16/revealed-secret-harlequins-stunning-revival/

For the past four months, more and more players have been donning white bibs at Harlequins’ training base at the Surrey Sports Park in Guildford. To the outsider the change of colour may seem fairly innocuous but its true meaning has not just helped change the club’s fortunes this season; it could signify a revolution in professional rugby.

The white bib is a sign that the player wearing it must not take any contact, a decision which is made by coaches monitoring impact data gathered by ‘smart’ gumshields. It has led to a reduction in contact by up to 900 per cent, a day’s less on-pitch training each week and an unprecedented drop in injuries.

If anybody was wondering how Quins managed to turn around their season, this is it. You would think that the club would be cagey about the secret to their success in the week of their Premiership semi-final against Bristol. But Danny Care, the scrum-half who is in the form of his life aged 34, is eager to explain. “I have seen ridiculous amounts of contact over my career,” Care says. “I feel a lot of it is unnecessary.”

This groundbreaking ‘less-is-more’ approach comes from players wearing Protecht gumshields, which are fitted with a microchip that monitors the collisions a player takes to both the head and the body. It is a British technology success story as they are designed by Swansea-based Sports & Well-being Analytics to create a database clubs can use to decide when players should rest.

Gloucester and Leicester are also using Protecht as are Welsh region Ospreys. But it is at Harlequins where the impact of the technology has been most stark.

From the beginning of the conversation, Care is adamant that player welfare demands that all clubs should adopt this technology. As a former team-mate at Leeds of Steve Thompson, Alix Popham and Dan Scarborough, who have all gone public with their battles with dementia, for Care, this is personal.

“I have spanned quite a lot of the professional era because I am so old now and a lot of the people who I have played with have mild forms of dementia from repeat concussions,” he says. “A lot of them are the guys who are going through the lawsuit. I played with a lot of those lads at Leeds, I know them personally and I know how rugby, the sport they loved and I love, can have really bad consequences on health.

“So having seen that happen first-hand to people that I know, when Protecht came and they had this invention that can fit into a gumshield that can monitor how hard people are getting hit, and how many times people are getting hit, I was like: ‘this is mind-blowing!’ Why didn’t we have this back when I started? How many of these lads wouldn’t have mild forms of dementia?

“As a rugby player, when you are training you don’t feel them [collisions], unless it is a big one. So to have that real time feedback you have taken too many hits is a massive game changer and I hope the whole league and other leagues of rugby all get involved in it.”

The long-term benefits are clear. But for Harlequins, there has been an immediate and profound impact. “My body at 34 feels a lot better than it did at 29, 30. I am not playing less rugby, I am maybe playing a bit more,” Care says.

“As you get a bit older you need to look after yourself more. I warm up a lot more than I did when I was younger. For me, taking out a lot of contact during the week has made me available for pretty much every game this year.”

As Mike Lancaster, Harlequins' head of medical services, explains, the introduction of reduced contact training is one of two major shifts at the club after the departure of former head of rugby Paul Gustard in January.

“What we are doing now, in terms of how we changed the amount of contact, is the second biggest change this season. We have more players available and fit. It has been a major factor for how we have performed.”

Care continues: “Mike, the medical team and the strength and conditioners and coaches have been great at listening to the advice, monitoring us, reducing the load and then we are getting more of our best players playing at the weekend. It isn’t rocket science. It is sensible, it is people’s lives, it is not just their rugby careers. The players are human beings who need their brains when they finish.”

Before speaking to Care, Lancaster suggests the 84-cap England international should be asked where thinks the technology could be used in the future. Again Care returns close to home, this time citing his experiences as the father of a rugby-playing child. His son Blake is six-and-a-half and his proud dad believes he “has something about him” and “could make a decent rugby player” - but, like many parents, he has concerns about the safety of the sport.

“The safety of rugby does scare me with him. If somebody said to me ‘would you rather your son play rugby or football?’ I would say football because I feel football is safer. But with Protecht coming into the game I genuinely think it is a game-changer.

“If even people like me are worried about their child playing, then maybe there is an issue. Hopefully, this is the start of something huge. I would love to be able to have this available for kids and to be able to speak to other parents.”

Returning to Harlequins and their meeting with league toppers Bristol on Saturday, Care believes the new approach to player safety, welfare and training load is part of a wider shift at the club he has called home for the past 15 years. “I think the environment over the last few years wasn’t true to what Quins really are,” he says.

“I think it was forcing us to be something that we are not. The last four or five months was about going back to what our DNA is and for me the key word about my time at Quins is fun. We enjoy ourselves. And that has been our buzzword, come into work, enjoy it, take the mickey out of each other, we train really hard and we have a lot of fun.

“We go out there and back ourselves. I have loved every minute of it and I would love to go for a title. That would be incredible from where we were five, six months ago.”

Last year, with less midweek training to account for games we shone.  This year, we've had lots of injuries - both soft tissue and major joints/tendons.  Lee has spoken about the players being emotionally fatigued but wonder if we've been over-training.  We beat Sale after a rest week and virtually no training.  Plenty of players have spoken about the impacts of being flogged in training week-in, week-out.

[hookender]

Got to be good for the long term future of game, especially if the 3 other clubs concur.

[Raggs]

I'd be slow to jump on it just yet, since unless the other 3 clubs also report similar results with similar methods, it could just be that quins had a fortunate period with regards to injury.

It does look encouraging though.

[13thWarrior]

Very interesting, thanks for sharing. Hopefully Wasps adopt those gum shields so we can monitor player contact levels, even if just for welfare rather than performance reasons.

Also, thought this was interesting: 'As Mike Lancaster, Harlequins' head of medical services, explains, the introduction of reduced contact training is one of two major shifts at the club after the departure of former head of rugby Paul Gustard in January.

“What we are doing now, in terms of how we changed the amount of contact, is the second biggest change this season. We have more players available and fit. It has been a major factor for how we have performed.” '

Wonder what the other change was? Perhaps the mindset/culture shift Care refers to?

[MarleyWasp]

Heartbreaking interview in the Times with ex-Quins player Renaldo Bothma, who has returned to the game with Tel Aviv Heat in the Rugby Europe Super Cup. Gustard certainly doesn't come across well.

Renaldo Bothma: My struggle with alcohol almost led to suicide – until I found my way back to rugby

An unexpected exit from Harlequins left Renaldo Bothma in a ‘dark hole’ of anxiety and depression, he tells Craig Lewis
Bothma played for Harlequins until his sudden exit at the end of the 2019-20 season

Bothma played for Harlequins until his sudden exit at the end of the 2019-20 season

Craig Lewis

Wednesday October 27 2021, 12.00pm, The Times

This month the former Namibia captain and Harlequins forward Renaldo Bothma found himself in the most unlikely of rugby destinations: training and playing in Russia, in near sub-zero temperatures. Undesirable for some, perhaps, but for the 32-year-old the opportunity to represent the newly founded Israeli side Tel Aviv Heat in the Rugby Europe Super Cup is considered a “blessing”.

After all, context is required. Less than two years ago Bothma was certain that he would never play rugby again. A shock retirement from Test rugby on the eve of the 2019 World Cup was followed by an acrimonious exit from English club Harlequins. In the months that followed, Bothma spiralled into a “dark hole” of depression and anxiety.

On a road suddenly paved with potholes and pitfalls, he admits that bad decisions and heavy bouts of drinking brought him to the verge of alcoholism and even thoughts of suicide. Yet, from the depths of despair, Bothma found the strength to walk the steps to sobriety, and ultimately onto a more surefooted path that led back to the rugby field.

It’s a remarkable story and one that Bothma is not afraid to share. Mental health awareness and the challenges of coping with the transition to life after rugby are subjects that he believes need to be more openly addressed. And although the past 18 months brought him to the brink, Bothma believes he is stronger for it.

“When rugby was no longer part of my life, I was left heartbroken,” he tells The Times on a cold morning in Moscow as Tel Aviv Heat prepared to face Russian club Yenisey-STM.

“I had played at Quins for three years from the end of 2017, and broke my arm three times, which was tough. But things really began to change after my first season at the club when the coach who had signed me, John Kingston, moved on, and Paul Gustard came in. He just broke my love for rugby and made everything difficult for me. Suddenly, I didn’t like the game any more, I felt lost and wasn’t enjoying everything as much as I should have.”

In June 2020, Harlequins announced that Bothma was one of several players who would be leaving the club.

“To this day, I still don’t know what the problem was,” Bothma says. “He [Gustard] clearly had issues with me, but I wasn’t the only one . . . He got rid of a lot of guys . . . You get coaches who like you and coaches who don’t like you.

“The club fired him eventually — which I think they should have done a lot earlier, and then I probably wouldn’t have stopped playing rugby when I did. But those are bygones, and I don’t want to dwell on the past.”

Bothma’s sudden exit from Harlequins scuppered a five-year plan to remain at the club. Rugby was put on the back-burner as the South Africa-born forward turned his attention to growing his fitness equipment business, Botthms. Yet, in a world brutally thrown off balance by the Covid-19 pandemic, Bothma battled to find his footing.

“Nobody could have expected Covid to hit, and things got tough for me,” Bothma reflects. “It was a big adjustment going away from a rugby salary. And to stay in the UK there were a lot of visa expenses, and with a growing business I still had to do a fair bit of funding through my personal finances.

“I started making the wrong decisions. I began drinking regularly, and it got to the stage where I was literally drinking almost a bottle of whisky every day for weeks on end. I’d stop for a while, but then start again. Things got very dark. I wasn’t good towards my family, and started feeling depressed and anxious.”

A professional life away from a familiar rugby setting took a severe toll, and was compounded by the restrictions of the Covid lockdowns. As a self-confessed “live wire” and “joker”, Bothma says he could never have imagined how challenging it would be to go from a vibrant team environment to a home office setting filled with unique business pressures.

“My coping mechanism was to just take the edge off with alcohol, which was not the right thing to do,” Bothma says. “I’d have these on and off spurts of drinking, but one morning I woke up and decided I needed to get out of this dark place that I was in with alcohol. I made a decision to stop drinking completely and started training again, and then things quickly started falling in place. Now I’m back playing rugby and I’m so grateful for that.”

Upon making his return to action with Tel Aviv Heat in mid-October, Bothma took to social media to openly share some of the challenges he had endured over the past 18 months, even acknowledging that it nearly led him to “end things”. Asked if this was in reference to being suicidal, Bothma said: “I did try something. I don’t want to put any specifics out there, but yeah, I think that’s the best way to describe it. I just had so many thoughts that I wanted to end it all, like, ‘Jeez, life has no purpose for me.’ ”

Although it can be daunting to talk about publicly, Bothma believes conversations around mental health challenges are more important than ever. In the high-pressure world of professional sport, the tennis star Naomi Osaka has opened up about her battles with anxiety and depression, advocating that “it’s OK not to be OK”, while the England cricket star Ben Stokes recently took a break from the game to prioritise his mental wellbeing.

Bothma says the narrative has to continue changing. “I’m definitely not the only one who has experienced a difficult time recently. There are current players going from one competition to another, and the rugby calendar is extremely congested. Then you add in the bio-bubble environments [because of Covid], and it can be very mentally taxing.

“A lot of players also aren’t fully aware of just how challenging it can be when your career comes to an end. I’m living proof of that, but there definitely needs to be a greater investment in equipping players to successfully prepare for what comes next after rugby, whether it be through studying or working with a mentor, because you can blink and suddenly you’re 30 or 35 and your career is coming to an end.”

With all this in mind, Bothma is more grateful than ever for his second chance, and has even set his sights on potentially running out for Namibia at the 2023 World Cup.

“I’ve worked extremely hard to get back into this position, but it’s been worth every drop of sweat and every kilometre that I ran,” he says. “Sometimes you can take the game for granted, but it’s true that you don’t really know what you’ve got until it’s gone. Now that I’ve experienced that, I know how much to appreciate it.

“For me, it’s not just about making a comeback, but to be able to tell myself, ‘Listen Renaldo, you’ve been in a hole, you’ve been through a lot of pain and uncertainty, but something good has come out of it, and now you can end your career on your terms.’

“I’m here today, playing rugby and I’m happy. That’s the most important part of everything.”

[JonnyD]

Gustard really doesn’t get much good press from his time at Quins.
Rumours that Smith almost left because of him being there and players being on the brink of mutiny led to him being let go.
Wonder what he’ll do next.

Hope Bothma makes his World Cup goal, great character!

[MarleyWasp]

Gustard is now at Benetton, with Andrea Masi, although just as a Defence Coach.