Masters will have to find new reserves against Navy, says coach

The Army Masters team is 80 minutes away from winning the 2022 Inter-Services Championship title, but Head Coach WO2 Dean Lloyd-Christie (RWxY) says that the players will have to call on all their reserves to lift the overall trophy.

The red shirts have already had to show their resilience in the Inter-Services Championship this year, battling back from a 13-0 deficit to beat the RAF 26-20 in Gloucester in the opening round of matches. WO2 Lloyd-Christie says that the team should be prepared for more of the same in Aldershot this Friday, even though he had the confidence that momentum would swing in the west country.

“I’m pretty relaxed in the way I deal with things,” he says. “I know the ability of our team when we get the right opportunities, so I knew we’d probably win, but it was how we would go about winning. It was a bit too close for comfort, but hats off to the RAF, who played the best we’ve seen in my five years with the Masters.

“I watched the Mariners play the Torbay Sharks, which was a good game. It showed us where the Navy have some threats. Major Boocock and Colonel Harris went to Ealing to see the games there, and I value their observations and opinions.

“At the end of the day I work on the policy of that if we can do what we do better than how we did it in Gloucester then they’ve got to defend us. We’ve got to defend them, obviously, but we rely on the individuals’ skillsets.”

Image © Army v RAF Match – Lee Crabb

The pandemic pause had a dramatic impact on the make-up of the Masters squad going into 2021/22, with a 50 percent turnover in players from two seasons ago.

WO2 Lloyd-Christie praised the positive attitude which has helped the playing group bond into a Masters brotherhood over the past few months. He has also encouraged all the players to play rugby regularly, with representation in National League 1, in the top end of the various regional leagues, playing Sevens, and fly half Sgt Dean Bradley in the England Touch representative pathway.

There is also an uncompromising attitude towards the fitness levels expected among the group, all with the aim of having an approach that can compete with much younger opponents.

That said, consideration does have to be given to accommodating the different physical needs of the older players in training.

“One of the biggest strengths we try to instil is the need to be fit,” the Head Coach says. “We don’t play ‘traditional’ Masters rugby, with gin and tonic or champagne rugby. That for me would not be engaging the players – it’s what they would do on a Saturday or with their normal over-35s teams – and we have to engage these guys because first and foremost we’re soldiers and we should be fit enough to do the job.

Image © Alligin Photography, Lee Crabb

“The brand of rugby that I try to play is that when you put the effort in, it’s 100 percent, but I’ll give you the opportunity to regain that effort before going into the next phase. I don’t treat the players any different in training sessions, although we might not be on our feet for as long as if we were 10 years younger, but when we are we do cover four to five kilometres in distance.”

This also applies in giving the players the confidence to play heads-up rugby within the overall framework – “if someone sees something in front of them then they can go for it. I’ll only ask the question if it doesn’t work, asking about what the outcome was” – and training sessions built around preparing individuals to be able to react to different game scenarios.

WO2 Lloyd-Christie acknowledges that this approach does come about from having a more experienced group, but also pays credit to his time coaching the Army’s Women for 10 years in shaping his attitude towards game preparation.

“If I hadn’t coached the Women then I wouldn’t be the coach I am now,” he says. “They do challenge, they do ask the question ‘why?’, and while in the older days a coach might say ‘because I’m telling you to do it’, that’s not acceptable. I coached England internationals with the Army team and they would ask ‘why are we doing this?’ and you’ve got to have an answer.

“That’s made me explain what we’re going to do and what the outcome we want is. So I do thank the Women for making me that kind of coach.”

Image © Alligin Photography, Lee Crabb

There is also the added benefit of having a wider range of life experience in the squad than normally seen in younger teams, not least in an Army set-up where a sizeable number of the players have leadership roles within their day jobs.

“You’ve got lots of natural leaders, along with every rank that is foreseeable, among the coaches as well as the players,” says WO2 Lloyd-Christie. “Sometimes you have to rein in their leadership qualities, because sometimes having too many leaders can be the same has having too many cooks, spoiling the broth. You want them to be leaders of their own game and what they’re delivering, but sometimes you need to point out who is the leader, this is the direction, and please help that.

“We have a Masters test, both on the pitch and off the pitch, and while I’ll back people to have an opinion and challenge us, sometimes it’s best to do it in a one-on-one basis.

“The players we’ve got at the moment, both old and new, have knitted really well, and that’s probably what got us through the RAF game. At 13-nil down 25 minutes into the game we then had a purple patch to score 26 unanswered points. If that leadership resilience wasn’t there then we wouldn’t have got the result.”

Image © Alligin Photography, Lee Crabb

Heading into this season the Masters had not been beaten since 2015, and while that record did end with reverses against Police England and Horsham, WO2 Lloyd-Christie insists that it was for the greater good, namely getting the team in the best possible shape to take on the RAF and Navy.

“This year we decided as a management group to challenge ourselves a bit more, which is why we went after playing Police England,” he says. “While we thought we’d probably get beaten it was about how we got beaten – it didn’t sit well but we learned a lot of lessons from it.

“Then we played Sandhurst, which was a really good team, young, fit, and made us play for 80 minutes. Then we played Horsham, where the ball was in play for 40 minutes against a team at the top end of London 1. We went well against them.

“So has it been the best season we could have had with what we’ve got? A hundred percent. To see that resilience and teamwork come together against the RAF, that probably wouldn’t have happened if we’d played our normal teams, and that will go into our post-season wash-up as to how we want to play next year.

“The RAF and Navy are not normal Vets teams. There’s something extra in Inter-Services games. You can play all the club rugby you want, but when you play against the light blue and the dark blue it’s a different kettle of fish. You find different reserves, you don’t want to let your teammates down.”

The Army Masters host the Royal Navy Ancient Mariners at Aldershot on Friday, April 29th. KO is 1400hrs and all are welcome.

Tickets for the 2022 Army Navy match (April 30th, Twickenham) are also still available.

CLICK HERE for information about Army Navy

Words © New Dogs, Old Tricks.

Header and Featured Images © Alligin Photography, Lee Crabb

The Army Masters squad to play the Royal Navy Mariners;