In 2020, Leicester Tigers won the English U18 Championship. They also won the prestigious Coach Logic Team of the Year award! This was down to their excellent use of the platform especially at a time where COVID restrictions made continuing to engage players very difficult.

We were fortunate to sit down and speak with Dave Wilks - Head of the Academy - who discussed and explained how they've kept their players engaged with some really innovative tasks and projects.

To see just how wide-ranging their platform usage really was here's some stats on what they achieved, in a season when rugby was so disrupted.

• Video Uploaded: 247 hours
• Video Played: 1002 hours
• Clips Created: 3772
• Playlists Created: 689
• Messages Sent: 3414

For more information on how they achieved quite so much engagement and activity, watch the below video. It really is a must-watch if you are involved in the development of young players, especially those Generation-Z players.

Some of the platform examples (without player names) have been shared below so you can see how it looks when posted on Coach Logic:

And a few more below. As you can see, they are making full use of the Feed, Playlists, Video Player, Mobile app...!

One of the great projects we heard about was the Tigers getting players to watch matches with a tactical mindset and check their terminology.

Dave explains more:

Using any footage you have available is good. Professional footage is obviously players at the peak of their game, better filming angles and allows aspirational players to relate to, especially to those in their position.

Another innovative example, which proved really successful, was flipping the player/coach roles and creating Specialist Coach challenges

Dave explains briefly what it involves:

In summary, the Tigers Academy have been pioneers in many aspects and we have admired what the coaches and players have managed this year.

Retaining the English U18 Championship was an amazing achievement. Their rivals are looking in and could certainly learn a thing or two from these lockdown projects.

We cannot wait to see what they do in 2021.