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Raise Your Game: Your job?

Geraint Ashton-Jones: I'm director of all the representative Navy rugby sides. I'm also the head coach of the senior XV team.

RYG: What skills do you need to be a good coach?

GAJ: The most important skill is remembering that you're here for others. It's all about getting the players to unlock from within them what they're trying to achieve, and facilitating that as part of the team.

RYG: As the players serve in the Navy are they naturally more disciplined and therefore easier to coach?

GAJ: They are disciplined and that gives them a start. The key part of the team that we're building is they're sportsmen as well. The goals that they've set themselves, and that they have set for them as a group, are sporting goals. We build their professional lives, that gives us a head start, but it's what they're doing in their sporting lives that's as important for them.

RYG: What's more important to you, talent or attitude?

GAJ: Attitude first, second and third. If you get a guy with the wrong attitude it can disrupt the talent that you've got in your organisation. The guys with the right attitude feed off each other. We can work on technical skills but give me 22 players with the right attitude and I'll make you a team.

RYG: How difficult will it be for you to choose who gets in and who's left out?

GAJ: In some areas it's quite straightforward. There are one or two hard choices to make over who gets in the team. You need the right balance, but the hardest part is knowing that some of the guys who are going to be left out have contributed as much as any of the players that take to the park. I need to make those players aware that they're very much still part of the team, and any success that we get is down to them as much as anyone else.

RYG: What makes a good team player?

GAJ: It comes down to something they have deep inside them. You want the individualism, that's what makes a sportsman, but you need a person that's prepared to temper that individualism when it's not best for the team. You need players to be unselfish, but you want that spark of individualism too.

RYG: What do you love about rugby?

GAJ: I think rugby's a special game for military people in general. It's competitive, it's combative, there's a contest, there's a bit of pain involved and there's aggression too. Within that are values which are more important than anything else. You can end up having a serious accident if you don't stay within the values of the game. It breeds a group of people who are fearless and aggressive, but they're also very disciplined and organised in how they channel that in the sporting environment.

RYG: There is also an element of respect within the game. How do we encourage young people to take those values out into everyday life?

GAJ: We need to make them realise that they can take the discipline they have in the training environment into other areas of their life. That will make them, in our case better sailors and marines, but also better people in general.

RYG: What do the players learn here that you'd like them to take into other areas of their lives?

GAJ: Probably two things. I'd like to think that we've unlocked something within them. Each time we come together as a team I'd like them to find out a little bit more about themselves. We're on a training paddock here today, when the guys go back to Navy life, I'd like people to view them as sports people.

The Navy team is something to be immensely proud of. I want other people to look at that and say 'That guy has got something that I believe in as a member of the Royal Navy, I want to support it,' or 'I want to get involved in the team.' I want people to feel a sense of pride and ownership over this organisation, because it's a great organisation to be part of.

RYG: These guys work hard in training but they also seem to be having fun, is that important?

GAJ: It is strict but the players are self-disciplined and they've got the desire to succeed. I've got immense admiration for the players we've got. They've all got very busy professional lives but not one person moans, whether they've been away on a ship, or away on ops. When they come here they bond together, and if you're having fun, you'll be more relaxed and you'll be a better player.

RYG: What are you hoping to accomplish with the Royal Navy rugby team?

GAJ: We're building something that we hope is going to expand. As a head coach I would like to think that, at the end of the Inter-Services Championship, when we look at each other, we as a team know that we gave it our best shot. We'll get what we deserve if we give it our best shot.

• The Army won the 2008 final of the Inter-Services Championship, beating the Royal Navy 22-11 on 3 May 2008.