Extract from Lacrosse talk issue 115...

July 2010 is approaching fast for England Coach Dave Elwood. Lacrosse talk talks to the England tactician about his plans

Has the personnel on the England coaching staff changed mcuh since 2006?

Tom Wenham and I are still involved, Simon Rowlinson no longer is.
Dan Green, the Engladn captain at the 2006 World Championships, has moved onto the coaching staff, looking after midfield and supporting the offense coach.
And Phil Collier has returned. He previously coached England and the U19's, and he's also recently coached Scotland. He came back for the Europeans in the summer and he's looking at all things attack.
Everyone on the coaching staff has played for England in at least one World Championship: Phil in 1982 and '86, Tom in 2002 and Dan in 2002 and '06. I played in 1986 and 1990.

A World Cup in football or rugby often marks the end of one four year coaching regime and the beginning of the next. Does something similar work in lacrosse?

Yes, four years, a stage by stage process in which to builf a squad to better the position reached at the previous Championships.
We've become a lot more focused since 2002, now that we have the academy and the opportunity to take the team to the states in the autumn. The cycle also rolls in the Europeans and U19's. But while there's a lot more regular timing, it's not full plan: post World Championships we purposely don't do anything.

The England squad doesn't receive a lot of funding. How much does lack of money constrain your planning?

Professional sports have academy teams and training camps, and the money to compensate clubs for the time that their players are away from their team; they have highly cometitive tournaments and qualification matches, they have full time, well paid coaches, assistant coaches, nutritionists, psychologists, personal trainers... the list goes on. We don't have this.
We do very well with the limited resourses that we do have, but the simple fact is that as the fifth ranked team in the world- and first in Europe- we should be financed directly by one of the sporting bodies.
This World Championships is being held in our country, and with realistic investment in our squad we would have a great chance of winning a medal. Instead it feels at times like we are fighting with one hand tied behind our backs. Highly competitive games are hard to get as we have to go abroad and players have to pay. We don't get paid as coaches: we all have full time jobs.
But we understand our financial environment and we know how to work within it. Our players and staff will work extremely hard to put the best team on the field in 2010. It will be a seven daya week, 69 week committment. Everyone will have to make personal sacrifices, especially financially, if we are to be at our best, and we'll do so becasue we love representing our country.

Is there a danger that lack of money will keep any players out of the Championships?

Since we've been involved - two world championships and one European- no players have missed out due to finance. We've been close with certain players but we find the solution.
That's our policy you can't be in a position where players have to be able to afford to play in the elite squad.

It is estimated that England’s women will have to find around £15,000 each to play in Prague this summer– more than £300,000 for the squad.How much will an England player have to find to play in 2010?

A similar amount. Attending the world championships actually is the cheapest bit, considering where it’s being held. It’s the preparation that will cost. Training weekends, American tours, gym fees, lost earnings, and so on.

Are there any stand-out issues that you would address if you had the funding?

Sports science. The prehab stuff would def increase. This is an area we would love to address immediately with the correct funding, as it is so important. We’ve used sports science before but we can’t do so on an individual or targeted basis. As a team we use facilities such as Loughborough, with great results, but again we haven’t targeted individuals. Go to the States more and for longer periods. We do pretty well with our trips to the states but you always have to do it on a budget. More access for individuals to coaches and gyms and training facilities. More video analysis, and we’d use sport psychologists. It would be great to do what the RFU does for the England rugby players; each player has his own individual laptop, with stats and video analysis of his gameand of the opponent.

Lacrosse in the States is a professional sport and must be close to using an approach like the one you describe. How do you level the playing field?

Clearly, the Americans have more resource, but they also have constraints that we don’t have to deal with. For example, the contractual responsibilities that players are under within the professional league will hamper their representative lacrosse. One advantage that we have is that we are so close geographically that we can get 

together and build a team. Geographically it is much tougher for them. We have that benefit over Canada and Australia as well. Also, I’d like to think that we as a coaching staff are very canny: we’ve learnt to do the best with the resource we have, there’s nothing else we can do.

How important was the recent European Championships in preparation for 2010?

Very important. All of that team have been taken forward to the next stage of the 2010 squad and all will be considered for the Worlds. We know as coaches and the players know as players that the Europeans are very different to the World Championships, in level of competition, pressure and expectations. It’s good prep, but we still need to go the States and gain very competitive match play.

The U19s did well at the U19 World Championships last year, notably taking the Australian scalp. Will any of them make the step up to the senior team in time for 2010?

The honest answer is that it’s up to them. Undoubtedly some have the ability and now they have the experience; it’s down to the time they commit. It’s tough at their time of life – many are attending University – to commit as much time as they need to, but it’s definitely down to time committed.

There is little over a year to go. How are you going to use the time?

Loyola are coming over, in June. Then an inter-squad league. Four teams with 15 to 16 players in each. That will be very competitive; we expect a lot. US fall ball period, out to the States. We’ll play five or six games.The schedule hasn’t been decided yet, but we will certainly play Loyola, Princeton and Drexel, all highly ranked teams. In addition to that we will have the standard weekend training camps and team-building weekends away.

LT described England’s most important match of the 2006 World Championships as being the first one against Japan, which England won 8–9. We figured this gave the team the confidence to go on and win the fifth-place play-off against the same nation. Was that a fair assessment?

No. The most important game for the team was the first game against the Iroquois, which was very disappointing to lose. But for the team to then lift itself and come back and beat the Japanese was testament to our physical and mental resilience particularly in light of it being the fourth game in four days in more than 100 degrees of heat. Some players were losing on average of eight pounds of fluid a day, which had to be rehydrated over night; our support staff – particularly Rachel Lazenby – did a fantastic job. The victory over Japan certainly gave the team confidence going onto the final showdown, though – and the coaching staff also had the film of the of the first game to enable us to put together an effective game plan.

Had the play-off result against Japan been different would your overall objectives for the 2010 championships also be different?

We would have learned lessons whatever the results, but the fact that we made positive strides was great for the squad. The successes of the U19s and the Euro team last year show we are moving in the right direction. We have great faith in this team doing good things next summer.

Peter LeSueur, Mark Reynolds, Matthew Beadle, David Bryant,Paul Flowers. Your top scorers in 2006. How many are likely to playin 2010?

Well, Matthew and David didn’t try out, but the other three are in the squad. I can’t say if they’ll make the team, but they’re in with a shout of being the top scorer again.

OK , contentious question. How many Americans do you expect to bring into the 2010 squad?

Ah. You mean overseas-based players eligible to play for England? We now know how many are in the squad, but in terms of the final selection we’re not sure. There are FIL rules to adhere to in terms of non-UK passport holders, but the players that we have all hold UK passports. The main thing is that the player fit into the team ethos and commit to our training schedule.

Given the geographic distance how do they try out? Or do you rely on video evidence and statistics?

They’ve all been over. They have all played for the seniors, U19s or trialled.

A recent study by UK Sport showed that the host nation in a world championship, on average, raises it performance levels by 25 percent. Thereport identifies familiarity, traveltime, time zones, home crowd andjudging as factors. How would yourate these in order of importance?

Time zones are not so relevant. When wetravel abroad we go with enough time torecover.Familiarity will help, as will travel times.I’d like to think all refs will be fair.The crowd remains to be seen. It would be great to have thousands of home fans cheering us on – not something we will have experienced before. But I’m not so sure that in a sport like ours playing at home is a huge advantage. There’s a lot to be said for being away – no distractions.

Ok, conversely, playing at home is there unreasonable pressure to perform?

No greater pressure; playing in any world championships is intense. Part of our selection process is to picking bi game players – players who can deal with the situation. There are also things that we can do to help the players deal with things: like ensuring they get good down time, and providing relaxation and visualization techniques.

Million-dollar question: What is your target for England in 2010?

Team ownership of goals is very important. We’ve yet to go through this with the team. That will be with the final team; we’ll sit down and go through what we all want to achieve. As coaches we want to perform to the best of our abilities, to ensure everyone is happy and playing as well as they can. Ultimately, a top three finish.