It was alumnus Ben Ryan who coached the team to gold in Rio. With a career focused on coaching across a range of different sports, we asked Ben for some of his highlights and insights into the games, and we also found out more about his latest role with Brentford FC.
Ben Ryan started out as a sportsperson, playing rugby to a high level. He played in the Premiership and was in national age group squads. Injured early on during his time with West Hartlepool in the Premiership, Ben turned to other endeavours between injury which has ultimately led to a successful coaching career.
He gained a BSc degree in Physical Education and Sports Science with Recreation Management in 1995 from º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ. He later earned a master’s degree and qualified as a teacher from Cambridge. Diversifying his career, Ben spent time as a supply teacher and taught PE in schools in between injuries. He ended his professional career at 37, having been a player-coach at Championship level. He would then move into full-time coaching.
Those early days in education would build some of the foundations that would support Ben in his move to a coaching career.
He was still playing rugby when he joined º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ:
“We had freshers trials for rugby and they put us in different positions to line up. Anybody that had played at least county level was to stand in one position.
“I was playing center at that point and there were thirty people there that had played county in that position, which was pretty crazy. The levels were really high, and I was probably as fit as I ever was in my career.”
Running around campus as a warm-up, Ben says º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ was the place where he “grounded a lot of fundamentals”.
He added: “Basing a lot of your philosophy around working hard on the pitch and on fitness, I’ve got some lifelong learning from º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ. I still speak to my old psychology tutor, Professor Austin Swain, who has been really significant in my development.
“All in all, º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ I owe a huge amount to.”
Having coached for a while following his playing career – including for several years as the coach to the men’s England Rugby 7s – Ben took on his next challenge of coaching the Fiji side. He describes the experience as “magical”.
He added: “To sum it up, really incredible talent and they were just beautiful people.”
Ben referenced how well the squad soaked everything up, “which is what you want as a coach”.
As well as working with the team on building solid foundations and giving the team members a culture and environment in which they could thrive, Ben recalls mornings at training camps:
“We would sit down – and I’m not religious at all – but we’d sing songs for five minutes. We’d have a little prayer, make sure everyone was okay for the day, have a hug and go and have breakfast.”
He’d then spend time with coaches, the physiotherapist and trainer... but that was only after he’d already been with the team for a couple of years. At the beginning Ben was also doing strength and conditioning, fitness, coaching, nutrition, psychology and analysis. In his last year with the team, he brought in a couple of people to support him – one from Fiji and one from the women’s team in the UK.
He added: “It really varied. I’d probably finish at around 5 or 6pm every day and then go back to my place outside Suva, the capital, a beautiful house on a reef. That was my place of sanctuary really. I did that on and off for three years until I left and moved on to other things.”
What about the pressure of the role? There was huge expectation from the 7s squad to achieve great things in Rio – but Ben knew it was possible.
“When I look back, there was an expectation, and I put that upon myself to win gold very early on. I knew that we had the capability to do that. It was really controlling what we could control and throughout my coaching career I’ve been pretty good at – and currently with Brentford it’s the same – making sure you separate the things that you can control and the things you can’t.
“We could control people being on social media or on their laptops or phones. The boys all handed in their phones – we went off grid basically.”
With phones handed in to the manager, the team had chance to focus on the task ahead. They could request their phone to make a call, but this was one of the ways in which the team kept focused on themselves.
They headed to the athletes’ village around four days before the tournament, so that focus beforehand was key. Ben added:
“We had a camp in Chile to take the pressure away from the team because in Fiji it was substantial. Every day we’d be in the news and we needed to take them away from that bubble.
“We did everything as a team. We had breakfast, lunch and dinner together, we walked around together, and I think that really helped.
“The nerves were pretty aligned and as my old sports psychology professor says, it’s okay to have butterflies as long as they’re flying in formation, and that’s kind of how I felt.”
When the teamwork and skills all came together and paid off in the final against Great Britain for Fiji to take gold, how did it feel for Ben as the coach?
“It was perfect. It’s a rarity as a coach to get a whole group of athletes and staff in what Hanin – another psychology quote – would talk about in the zone of optimal function, where they were on this level where they were highly competent and anything that was thrown at them, they could deal with, but they weren’t overconfident.
“They were grounded, they were humble, and they were happy.
“You get one or two moments in your career where you’re coaching teams or working with players or as an athlete - I can remember it once as a rugby player where you just feel effortless, and you feel like everything is in slow motion – and that’s what it felt like for the team in Rio. We scored our first try after 30 seconds and five more by half time.
“The IOC gave us the male team performance of the Olympic Games and it was because they were just so ruthless, but also very relaxed.”
When Ben returned to Fiji with the team, they would get a welcome home like no other. Bringing back the country’s first-ever games medal, Ben recalls their return:
“It was off the Richter scale. We had three days of bank holidays. We had a tour around the island. It normally took three hours to get from the airport to Suva, and it took more than seven.
“I was Knighted, given land, made a Chief and I was put on their bank notes and coins. All the boys were given land. It was just amazing really, beautiful.”
Thinking about the experience for current athletes and coaches on the global stage in Paris, Ben said:
“You can’t treat it like another event, because it isn’t. You need to have a conversation about that and understand again, going back to what you can control and what you can’t. Don’t change your routines drastically but embrace the fact that you’re at the Olympic Games.”
Stepping away from the Fiji 7s after their victory in Rio, Ben left behind a successful team who went on to defend their gold medal in Tokyo. .
Having worked across 15-a-side and 7s rugby and having taught PE in schools, Ben had experience across a range of sports. Leaving Fiji, Ben did some work with a basketball team in America and then worked as a consultant for UK Sport, Nike, and the French Rugby Federation. He worked across more sports and consulted for a couple of football teams before landing his current role with Brentford FC, who play in the Premier League.
The broad experiences gave Ben the chance to “understand some of the key fundamentals around performance that is linked across all the sports”. He talked about taking away “technical and physical requirements on the pitch.”
He added: “You've got to find ways to achieve optimal performance all the time in an environment that's highly pressurized and you're trying to constantly ease the pressure but push the standards. And that's probably one of the things that I've loved the most in my career. That constant challenge to try to work out how you can do things better. And that's exactly what I'm doing at Brentford as a Performance Director.”
Now working in top-flight English football for his third season, Ben said there are now more than half of the teams in the Premier League with Performance Directors, but all with varying remits.
Ben looks at performance, medical, sports science, player care, team operations and coaching. A wide-ranging role, it spans to look at the pitches, food and chefs. “You have to constantly make sure that you’re learning and knitting all of this together to see how you can try to gain first move advantages over other teams in the league. I'm looking forward to us growing again this season at Brentford. It's arguably the most competitive elite league in the world. You're never safe from relegation and you're never too far off from winning trophies and getting to the top or the top half of the league. We’re process driven, we’re based around a lot of data. If our numbers get better next season and then I'll be happy, and we'll keep moving forward.”
With such broad experience across elite sports in different parts of the world, we asked Ben’s advice for people considering a career in sport coaching:
“If you want to coach, just do it. I get lots of messages from people asking me if they can shadow me for a few weeks. I used to have the same when I was with England and Fiji and France, and actually it doesn't matter if you're starting your coaching journey, you don't need a high level to start with. When I started my coaching journey, I was coaching kids’ rugby and multiple sports. Get the hours in as a coach at all sorts of different levels so that you can get as much experience as quickly as possible to try to accelerate, use it as a trampoline to accelerate your learning and development and just throw yourself in at the deep end and absorb yourself in it.
“Whilst you're doing that, just have a look and see where you think you might have a niche at the start as well, something that perhaps you can get into a really deep knowledge of because you're going to need that during your career.”
Thank you to Ben for sharing an insight into his journey and we wish him the best of luck for the new season.
As we celebrate º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ athletes and coaches, our alumni spotlights are honing in on some of our former students and staff who have also competed on the global stage.
Find out more on the º¬Ðß²ÝÊÓƵ athletes on the global stage website or by checking out #Lboro2Paris on social media.
