Jo Yapp, the Player's Coach
Yet another love letter from one of her former players to make her uncomfortable.
Since the World Cup in 2022, we have seen a huge amount of change in the coaching space. New Zealand, England, France, USA and most recently Australia have all appointed new head coaches. New Zealand went with Allan Bunting, England picked John Mitchell, France promoted Gaëlle Mignot and David Ortiz and most recently, Australia have named Jo Yapp as their head coach. Jo Yapp, the woman at the top of many people’s shortlist for the England job, is heading to a land down under.
Timing was in their favour as Yapp by all reports is fiercely loyal. When the Red Roses were looking, Jo was still very much all in on the Worcester Warriors. This was the team she had helped hold together through financial strife, she wasn’t going to jump ship no matter who was asking.
The management Simon Middleton’s departure has to be a lesson for England in all of this. Having him coach the Six Nations series as his retirement party meant interviews for the next coach clashed with the PWR season. It also meant his successor, John Mitchell, didn’t join his team until 5 months after his confirmation. Not the type of transition you would expect from a World number one ranked team.
So the Aussies have pulled off a robbery, pinching one of the world’s best coaches right as she is coming into her full power. But most importantly, she is the right coach for right now. I am so excited.
The Wallaroos are the Black Ferns most regular rivals and they have never beaten us. While this scratches a particular itch for us as little sisters over the ditch, it is actually terrible for the development of the game in our region. It’s the old cliche of ‘in order to be the best, we need to beat the best’. And the Aussies have not been playing their best. Largely because Rugby Australia hasn’t been backing them too.
Contrast this with the fierce rivalry between the Black Ferns and Aussie 7s. Here you see the potential for what this contest could be. I would love for the Laurie O’Reilly Cup to take even a fraction of the excitement that the sevens contest between these two does.
The Wallaroos have been getting better. The small paycheque player’s received this year paid off big time during WXV. They just need someone in their corner to back them to get up to the next level - in their programme and on the pitch. Enter Jo Yapp.
Stef Evans is one of my best mates. Mainly because we see the rugby and our place in it in much the same way. She’s outspoken (ohh you’ll see cause this is a long one!) about the state of play. A realistic radical, she believes in Jo Yapp. After reading this, I think you might too.
So here’s Stef on Jo Yapp, in her own words.
Beaut shot of Stef with some young fans captured by Photography with Flo
The Wallaroos are some lucky, lucky kids. The most common joke that's been made in the Warriors group, as soon as the first article came out that confirmed Jo’s appointment, was about trying to find an Australian relative, trying to snake themselves a passport. ‘Are any of my grandparents Australian?’. It's funny because, like all good humour, it has its roots in truth. If you could buy Australian citizenship, a lot of us Warriors would be happily maxing our credit cards out right now. That’s how good she is.
There are very valid reasons why Australia nabbing her for the job has been talked about like it has. Obviously, programmes are a lot bigger than one person, but having the right one person in one job can change everything for everyone. She has the skillset to unlock the Aussie code. That might sound like a massive claim to someone on the outside of it all, but it’s honestly just factually accurate; the question of Australia and success in 15’s has never had to do with the athletes there, that’s abundantly obvious to anyone with eyes.
She's arriving into a country that has already produced insane rugby athletes, that has a massive pre-existing understanding of rugby. A country that should have more success than it’s had, because ALL the ingredients are there, you know? That team, those athletes, you watch them play and just think, imagine what they’ll do with more investment, with more support, with a full-time coach. They haven’t had someone full time before Yappy, which is insane, but what a first full time coach they’re getting with her.
The Wallaroos already know how to play rugby. What she's really brilliant at, and what I think they've been missing is a cultural cornerstone, somebody who can build a programme and who knows and understands how to create buy-in. I’ve honestly never seen somebody in any environment create buy-in like she does, who can create culture like she does, in such an authentic, genuine way. It’s not unrealistic to think that this could be the start of something huge for the Wallaroos, because she’s bringing that last key ingredient to an already loaded table, and she knows exactly how to approach that table when she gets there.
Jo understands where women’s rugby is at, she understands the semi-professional experience, but most importantly, she knows the difference between doing what is needed versus the minimum you can get away with. I think that’s going to resonate hugely with a playing group that’s just come together to stand up for itself and hold its governing body accountable for inequitable treatment (that was so badass, btw). I’m thrilled that steps are being made in the right direction, that 35 players are receiving contracts and that the programme is starting to get the support it deserves.
Some of those players will be experiencing that investment and support feeling for the first time. Some of those players have been playing in other leagues in other countries, they’ll have been exposed to other programmes that are professional, they’ll know what that feels like. They’ll have expectations, and rightfully so. That old saying “can't see, can't be” gets thrown about a lot, but we don't often mention the other side of it, “once you do see, you can't unsee”. If you've been in a programme where you get treated like an athlete, it's very hard to go back to an environment where you aren’t supported properly, and if you’ve got individuals in your playing group who have had that experience, Jo is the right person to make them feel like they’re finally returning to something that feels familiar in the right ways.
She’s someone who has first hand experience with coaching those environments herself, but also has all of her own playing career to pull from, in an era with much less support and much less investment than we have now. That’s incredibly relatable. On top of that, Australia is a country that’s had a bunch of player overlap between 7’s and 15’s, and she obviously had a massive fifteens career but also a massive sevens career as well, so she understands what it’s like to go between the two, to have to make prioritisation choices. Really, I don't think that there would be anybody in that playing group that she wouldn't be able to have a sit down conversation with without that player being able to find some common ground with her, and that is such a huge advantage for a coach and for a leader.
I can speak confidently on Jo’s skillset because I’ve seen it first hand, being coached by her for the past several years at Worcester. Before our funding got pulled and the team folded. She’s extremely competent technically, of course, but a lot of top level coaches are. That ability to get a group together, to make them cohesive, to speak to them in a way that makes them want to put the group before themselves, that skillset is a lot rarer.
Every player on that Warriors roster would have run through a brick wall for her, for the team. People wanted to put their ego’s aside for the good of the group, all the time. It’s pretty impressive, and I don't want to diminish what she does by calling it simple, because it’s really difficult to create absolute cohesion and that team-first mentality, especially in elite sport, but it IS simple in the sense that she isn’t re-inventing the wheel to get those hard things done. She just treats people with respect, she's honest, she thinks for herself, and it works.
I’d been at a couple of other Prem clubs before Warriors, and when I decided to leave my previous club I made myself a promise that I was not going to play for debt anymore. I wasn't asking for a bunch of money, or any money, actually; I just wanted to enjoy playing rugby again, and to do so in a way that wasn't going to leave me massively out of pocket for expenses at that point. I was talking to a number of different clubs and everybody was absolutely lovely, very polite and had time to give me a couple of phone calls, that kind of thing.
When it came to Worcester, however, Jo asked if I would drive up and come meet her in person instead of chatting through things on the phone. When I got there, she had blocked out probably a good hour for me. She gave me a tour of Sixways, to show me the whole facility, give me an idea of the club and their objectives, and introduced me to all the other coaches. They'd already pulled up clips, I didn't have to provide my own, they'd done their own research.
All of that really impressed me and made me feel respected, especially as a club player. At the end of the tour, both Jo and Bird (Liza Burgess), the forwards coach at the time, had a chat with me and both said something along the lines of ‘What do you want out of a rugby club?’ and again, that stood out. I’d never been asked that before from a potential new club.
With most coaches I think they come to the meeting assuming you're interested, and of course you are, because you’re there, obviously, but the main focus usually is around what you as a player can offer the club. When it comes time to flip that question around, it’s usually quite focused on things like expenses, if there is budget or opportunity to get paid anything, that sort of thing. The stuff that goes in the contract. Jo and Bird weren’t asking that though- they wanted to know what sort of culture I wanted to be a part of, what I felt strongly about, what my own goals were as a player, that sort of thing. It just all seemed so refreshing, and she seemed to be so respectful of my time.
Having a conversation like that right at the beginning probably seems really straightforward or obvious to have, but I do think it’s easy to skip those steps. It makes a lot of sense to check in from both sides, as a player and as a coach, to really see if this is a relationship that is going to work for both parties outside of the contractual stuff. I think so much of what creates cohesion in any sort of group, but especially a team, has to do with personalities and ideologies, being on the same page, having similar views on core values. It's so much easier to buy into something when you're already kind of arriving pre-bought into it in some way.
The fact that she’d made sure to check those boxes with me, in a very intentional way, really impressed me. After I took a couple days to think about it, I made the decision to go to Worcester, and I was obviously really excited. I had a good feeling, a hopeful feeling, but just with any big decision there's always this other feeling… you're like, ‘Oh my God, I hope I made the right decision’.
Fast forward a few weeks, preseason is getting underway. My first training at Worcester everyone was absolutely lovely, and I wasn’t quite ready to trust it. I do remember making a joke after to one of my friends. They were asking ‘Well, how's Warriors going?’, that sort of thing. And I remember saying ‘You know, everyone's really nice and it's lovely, it's great. But everyone is absolutely bloody obsessed with Jo. It’s like a cult.’’
Probably about a month later that same friend checked in, you know, hey, how’s the cult treating you, whatever, and I’m like… Listen, I don't know if this cult needs a secretary, or fundraising or what, but I’m in. I definitely made a joke about it at the beginning but the joke was on me- I ate those words REAL quick.
It's kind of funny because she's not a loud person or an overly emotional person, really more introverted. She doesn’t seem to love being the centre of attention or want a big deal made about her. She’s probably going to hate this whole thing when it’s out (laughing). Well, hate is a strong word, but she’ll probably be like, “Oh god”, roll her eyes or something. She doesn’t do what she does for the attention or for accolades. I genuinely just think she loves rugby and is a good person. She’s very humble, she’s always professional, but alongside the professionalism she’s just very genuine.
You always get the feeling that she cares deeply. She doesn't talk about it, she doesn't go on and on about how she feels but you never feel like you are unseen or like you don't matter. She doesn’t bullshit you. She doesn’t bring her ego to work. She always has time. It might not be a bunch of time, she knows how to maintain and model healthy boundaries, but she'll say, ‘I've got three minutes, let's go’, that kind of thing. I don't know what that says about our wider community, for all of that to stand out the way that it does, but it really does and it really works. She gets the best out of people by treating them like people first, players second.
Warriors was the first club that I've played at where I felt truly comfortable. It’s where I felt like I could bring up my ADHD, being on the spectrum, having a different way of learning and a different way of thinking, without the huge fear of being treated differently because of it. There's been a number of times where Jo checked in and said ‘What do you need for me here? How can I support you?”. No applying stereotypes or assumptions or anything, just asking me what I need, respectfully. So often, when you're speaking about being neurodivergent, people will start treating you differently, often with great intentions, but it’s awful.
When I say I often felt afraid of telling people about my neurodivergence, I mean I wasn’t afraid that people would be mean about it, because people won’t really, no one wants to look like an asshole. But they will treat you like you're a fucking idiot, or like you can’t be trusted with things, and that makes me insane. Jo didn’t do any of that. She didn’t make any assumptions, she didn’t lower her expectations, she didn’t write me off. She just got to know and understand me as an individual. Again, something simple, that’s actually quite hard for a lot of people to do.
Jo talks a lot about the word professionalism and what it actually means. That it’s not something that requires a paycheck, it’s how you conduct yourself, how you show up in the world. It’s not contingent on getting paid. It’s the idea that you're doing yourself a disservice if you are going to put all this time and effort into this and then settle for showing up as a subpar version of yourself, putting in a subpar effort.
I think that's a really powerful framing of effort in rugby, because if you're able to justify a lack of effort by saying ‘I don't get paid enough for this’, then that can become a slippery slope to get on. If this amount isn’t enough for you to give your best, what amount is? At what number do you then say to yourself, I'm actually going to show up? In this era of semi-professionalism, the person who loses out the most from that sort of approach is yourself.
Jo challenged us to act like professionals because it was the right thing to do, for ourselves, and for each other, regardless of the impact to our bank balances. Now, it’s important to clarify that this concept has nothing to do with justifying working for free; in fact, Warriors were the only club in the Premiership where everyone who played got paid something. That was at Jo’s insistence, it’s not a mandate from our league. It was important to her, so she made it happen for us.
I think it might shock a lot of people to find out that the vast majority of Premiership players play on volunteer contracts, and I’ve heard all sorts of horror stories about how some of those contracts don’t cover expenses, even for players driving several hours one way four or more times a week. How some of those players have had to go through the NHS for different things after finding out they’re not completely covered medically.
None of the clubs writing those contracts are doing anything “wrong” because the league leaves anything to do with salary caps very soft, and very open to each club to manage as they want to. That seems to mean that most clubs have a small number of paid players, usually internationals who are already on paid contracts from their countries, and the rest of the squad is on very little or on nothing at all. A few at the top getting two paychecks from playing, a lot at the bottom spending their paycheck to play. There’s huge inequalities across the playing group, and that’s honestly a different and more complex conversation, but it’s important to understand that making sure every player who wore a Warriors shirt got paid something was another example of a simple thing that doesn’t get done. And Jo got it done.
Obviously the internet is not short on very impassioned testimony as to how important she's made people feel, or the really significant difference that she's made, but what’s especially impressive is she managed to balance that level of empathy without compromising expectations or performance. Nothing about the coaching that we had at Worcester or how Jo conducts her programme is soft. Everything was intentional, everything was reviewed, everything was examined, everything was measured. The question every week was, how can we make this better, how can we improve this stat, how can you as an individual improve for the good of the team.
Her expectations are always up here, and she never shied away from delivering news that would be hard to hear. You had to earn your shirt, every week, but if you didn’t, you got clear objectives on how to earn it in the future. It was still pro sport. It still felt unfair sometimes, because pro sport is unfair. It still felt hard, because it is hard. And yet, so many of us Warriors describe our experience as being overwhelmingly positive. So many of us describe our time at Worcester with so much gratitude, and talk a lot about how she helped us love rugby again or how she put us back together in some way, but she didn’t do that by compromising on the core tenets of elite sport.
I don’t think most people understand how difficult it is to achieve both of those things at the same time. None of the player testimonies that you see about Jo, talk about technical rugby stuff, despite her being quite a technician. She is hugely into stats and review and analysis and extra skill sessions. She’s excellent defensively. She has a real rugby brain. She offers all of those hard skills, and she can execute them at a high degree, and yet, that’s not the thing people talk the most about. You know what I mean? Imagine being a technically brilliant coach, and that not being even close to the most impressive part of your coaching resume. That is very telling, I think, and something that Australia should be very excited about.
Stef and Jo, after the Barbarians U18 match that Stef coached (thanks to Jo’s endorsement!)
She walks the walk, too; she lives by the tenants that she talks about, and she doesn’t try to show up as anyone other than herself. She doesn’t act like that old-school rugby coach stereotype; I don’t think I’ve ever heard her yell, but that makes sense, because she isn’t a yelly sort of person. I think that’s my biggest learning from Jo, the effectiveness of being genuine. That’s what puts people at ease, isn’t it? What makes them trust you, regardless of the style of delivery. When they feel like there's no mismatch between how you're coming across versus who you are.
I have a very different personality from her, but seeing how effective she can be by knowing exactly who she is gives me faith that I can do the same thing in a different way in my own coaching career. If I trust who I am, if I show up as a real version of myself and apply my genuine personality to how I deliver concepts, how I lead groups and how I instruct those around me, then they’ll be more likely to buy into what I’m saying.
It’s been a huge lesson to learn. People can tell when you're acting, they can tell when you're performing, they can tell when you're running a script or when you're posturing. It's the core of all teen movies, right? People who are trying to be something they're not, and how it doesn’t work. Being genuine, at the end of the day, is what makes people trust you, feel comfortable and buy into what you're saying, and Jo understands that deeply.
Jo Yapp as a coach is Jo Yapp as a person, and she’s bloody brilliant at both.
I wish I was Australian.
How nice it is to leave 2023 with a good news story, albeit for the Aussies! Here’s hoping that Rugby Australia build on this good start and fully fund their players.
In 2024, it’s be game on. The Laurie O’Reilly Cup just got a heck of a lot more interesting.
With you,
Alice