I'm involved with the Harriers and know that some of the coaches, one in particular, has done speed training with several rugby league, including super league players. If you want to PM me some details about him - age, contact details, position he plays etc I can get someone to contact him who can match him to the best coach.

Many of the people down there are big Wakey fans so don't assume they just have athletics at heart.

I do a lot of work with Neil Holmes who is a senior lecturer on Athletics at Leeds Carnegie University and has worked extensively with Leeds Rhinos over the last 5 years or so. Is he by chance one of the coaches you refer to in your post?

I think all of the above is answered in the thread.

it does fascinate the difference between stamina and sprint as it is totally different,

my mrs first view of a winger was John Bentley at Halifax and was amazed of his leg size

smitten to RL since

thanks for all assistance I will take all info in and if anyone can go deeper into why the difference it would be far more entertaining than arguing stadiums

remember when that sprinter turned out for cas, he chased a kick for 80 yards, then wanted to lie down for an hour.

lindsay rotherford could shift a bit. remember that try against fulham at belle vue as if it were yesterday.

The young full back side stepped him like he wasn't there and Chambers went flying past.

Bentos, what a legend. Is he still playing? I think he was turning out for a local RU team a couple of years back.

He was flippin' quick though

Thats where the sports specific conditioning comes in. All his life he trained to perform over a 10 second max time scale and as such he conditioned his body to do just that via his training. His anaerobic system was superb, but his aerobic system not nearly prepared for the demands of rugby league.

That is the point about young lads going to Harriers who are doing it for the benefit of improving speed at rugby. Harriers will certainly give coaching and technique advise related to improving sprinting for athletics, but its a little more complex than that because you have to look at technique for a rugby player that will improve his speed but also not have a negative impact on his ability to take contact etc.

Rugby players generally when looking to improve speed need to improve on the initial acceleration phase as very rarely do players get into the "flight" phase so it is important to consider the game you are playing prior to any conditioning/coaching is undertaken.

It's a purely unscientific view, but our U13's team recently recruited a couple of lads who've been playing football since they were 6 or 7; they're relatively green to RL, but are scoring tries for fun (one lad has scored 13 tries in 3 games) mostly by virtue of being able to accelerate from a standing start and change direction very quickly. I'm not a fan of the game at all, but these lads are almost certainly benefitting in RL terms from their football training.

In the context of this conversation, I guess a decent football training regime will include some sprint/speed work that's adapted to be appropriate to the sport?