Childs play: Ex-South African schoolboy coach excited by new PREM challenge

Seven weeks in, Craig Childs is relishing his first senior defence coach job in professional rugby, having swapped University of Cape Town team Ikey Tigers for Leicester Tigers.

Childs’ work with Ikey Tigers in the Varsity Cup dovetailed with his role as pathways defence coach/assistant first team coach at the Stormers, which he held for three years working under Norman Laker, before accepting the opportunity to move overseas and become part of Geoff Parling’s coaching team.

During his time at the Stormers, he was involved in the development of Springboks superstar-in-the-making Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu and Siya Kolisi’s heir-apparent in the back row, Paul de Villiers.

Before the Stormers, he was coach and then director of rugby at Wynberg Boys’ High School in Cape Town.

“I’ve coached for a long time now actually. I started off in the schoolboy environment and sort of worked my way up through the provincial structures in South Africa, through Western Province and into the Varsity Cup, which is a massive tournament in South Africa, and into the Stormers pathway and into the senior structure,” he explained.

“So, yeah, it’s been a long journey and I think I’ve had exposure at every level of rugby, right from little guys, many years ago, to obviously the senior guys; I think I’ve learned a lot at every step of the way.

“I think the thing that stands out to me is I’ve met a lot of good people along the way that I’ve learned from. and that challenge me in every environment, right from back in those early days (coaching kids) through the years, right up until at the Stormers, where I was so happy and I love the environment and obviously Cape Town and all of that.

“But, this opportunity came up and it was something really special to be part of this identity and what Geoff’s creating here with a group of players. The player base here and the staff want to win, and it would be great to be a part of that.”

A career coach, Childs is similar to his countryman, Bath’s Johann van Graan, in that he never played at a decent level himself, but has lived and breathed the sport from a young age.

“I would say to the players that my play wouldn’t inspire you. I played a bit at school and for Villager FC, a historic club in Cape Town.”

Childs and his wife Genevieve have settled in well in rural Leicestershire, especially now that their daughter Olivia is in school.

His arrival fills the hole left by Mike Forshaw’s sudden exit this time last year due to family reasons. Anthony Allen took on the role on an interim basis and remains a valued part of the coaching staff.

While keen to put his own stamp on things, Childs isn’t looking to reinvent the wheel.

“There’s a lot of history around how the team plays and what the fans celebrate, and we’d like to obviously stay in line with that,” he stated.

“Geoff and the staff that were here did an exceptional job in building a base. So we’re really continuing with those core principles around how we how we want to behave as a team and what we celebrate and what we expect, whether it be in the fifth minute or the 75th minute. We’re all about how quickly we can react to things and always being alive to what’s presented.”

Understanding that preventing teams from scoring is a nigh on impossible task is something all defence coaches have had to get their head around, given the shift in the PREM towards an all-out attacking mindset.

Now the trend is to use defence as a form of attack, and manipulating the attacking team to go into situations they don’t want to go into. Creating turnover opportunities for the likes of Tommy Reffell to exploit will be one of Childs’ focus areas.

“I’ve been a keen follower of the PREM over the last few years, and really enjoy the rugby and obviously what it produces.

“The game goes through waves, and certainly, if you look at Saints last year picking up the most tries in in the competition’s history.

“Teams are getting excited with the ball and are looking to play from all over. The days of just kicking it away really early are maybe are on the shelf for now.

“I think we really are understanding how we want to defend and apply pressure to the opposition. And I think if we’re able to execute that and we get buy-in around it, we’ll be able to – regardless of what the opposition throw at us – trap them, create enough pressure to get the ball back and then open those opportunities for ourselves.

“I think we’ve always said that the crowd celebrates a try as much as they celebrate a turnover; a good tackle; a maul stop; a pressure kick-set. So I think we want to bring that identity to what we’re doing, really forcing teams and trapping them to give us possession and then we can play off that.”