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Bristol hooker Harry Thacker advises young players not to 'smash the gym at 14'
By Online Editors
Bristol Bears hooker Harry Thacker has spoken out against an alarming trend of young players chasing size in order to make the grade in an interview with the Mail on Sunday newspaper.
Thacker was told at his former club Leicester that he was too small to make it as a front rower in the professional game.
"A fair few coaches there told me I was too small. I never really felt they trusted me to do a job."
He said the Leicester Tigers culture was based on using a big pack to run over the opposition, which didn't fit his game.
"I felt like I was always fighting a losing battle at Leicester."
Thacker has thrived at Bristol in the Premiership under Pat Lam, scoring six tries in his last seven outings this season.
"I get a lot of messages from kids at 14, 15, 16 on Instagram saying: "I'm being told that I need to put as much weight on as possible; what did you do"?', he said
"I've sat down with a few boys going through the system. I'm a strong believer that, if you're good enough, you should be there. The weight will come. I don't think guys at 14 should be smashing the gym.
"There's a lot of pressure for youngsters to be bigger, stronger, faster,' he said.
'There's probably more focus on that than their core skills. Passing, tackling, stuff like that.
"There is a lot of pressure and I think it's directed at the wrong things. When you're 18, 19, 20 is when your major growth should occur. Not at 16."
Thacker admitted his own approach was similar when he was growing up, but it came at a cost of playing his own way.
"I put on as much weight as I could put on — to the point I wasn't as able to play the game I wanted to play."
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"Right, so even if they were the 4 worst teams in Champions Cup, you'd still have them back by default?"
I think (i) this would literally never happen, (ii) it technically couldn't quite happen, given at least 1 team would qualify via the challenge cup, so if the actual worst team in the CC qualified it would have to be because they did really well after being knocked down to the challenge cup.
But the 13th-15th teams could qualify and to be fair I didn't think about this as a possibility. I don't think a team should be able to qualify via the Champions Cup if they finish last in their group.
Overall though I like my idea best because my thinking is, each league should get a few qualification spots, and then the rest of the spots should go to the next best teams who have proven an ability to be competitive in the champions cup. The elite French clubs generally make up the bulk of the semi-final spots, but that doesn't (necessarily) mean that the 5th-8th best French clubs would be competitive in a slimmed down champions cup. The CC is always going to be really great competition from the semis onwards, but the issue is that there are some pretty poor showings in the earlier rounds. Reducing the number of teams would help a little bit, but we could improve things further by (i) ensuring that the on-paper "worst" teams in the competition have a track record of performing well in the CC, and (ii) by incentivising teams to prioritise the competition. Teams that have a chance to win the whole thing will always be incentivised to do that, but my system would incentivise teams with no chance of making the final to at least try to win a few group stage matches.
"I'm afraid to say"
Its christmas time; there's no need to be afraid!
Go to commentsYou are a very horrible man Ojohn. Brain injury perhaps?
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