North Gwent and Powys Coaches Forum III – Guest Speaker Leigh Jones

The 3rd North Gwent and Powys Coaches Forum was held this week at Ebbw Vale RFC where Jason Strange and Mostyn Richards were joined by guest speaker, former Ebbw Vale RFC Head Coach Leigh Jones.

Leigh was the head coach at Ebbw Vale RFC during one of the clubs most successful eras in the late 1990s. During this time, Leigh turned the Steelmen into one of the top professional teams in the UK, orchestrating memorable victories against Toulouse and Toulon in European Competition and leading the Steelmen to the SWALEC Cup Final for the first and only time in the club’s history. Leigh then went on to coach Newport Gwent Dragons before becoming head of rugby operations at Hong Kong . He was assistant coach to Eddie Jones with Japan at the 2015 Rugby World Cup and more recently was the general manager at Leicester Tigers working with Steve Borthwick winning the English Premiership in 2022.

During the session, Leigh covered many really important elements to coaching e.g. relationships, managing the younger generation in the current game, intensity blocks in today’s coaching sessions and the importance of how we feedback to all our charges. The audience of 22 coaches were actively engaged in the presentation for two hours !

The EVRFC Head Coach Jason Strange commented “This was a very professional presentation from Leigh. Basically, he brought to life the current trends in the world game for the coaches of North Gwent and Powys. Leigh’s attention to detail about the current trends in rugby will serve the 22 coaches for a long time and the responses received from the audience evidenced how they found the evening to be so enlightening and inspirational.”

The next session for these coaches will be held in January.