The Magic Academy

Rusty chats with Tom Hartley - football coach, owner of a Masters in Early Years Development, prison project wizard, soon to be dad, top man...

Rusty chats with Dr Ed Coughlan... skill acquisition specialist, deep reflector, working on waiting at least 4 times for the players to work it out and aiming for transfer through PEAQ.

Rusty chats with David Murrie... lover of rugby, hater of tacking, coach, biomechanist and Michael Barishnikov lookalike. Website https://sites.google.com/site/davemurriesportsscience/

Rusty sits down to chat with Dave Sharkey, English teacher, rugby coach and lover of rockets...

Rusty chats with Maximiliano Jorge "Max" Caldas the very well respected Argentine field hockey defender, who made his debut for the national squad in 1994, and competed for his native country in the 1996 Summer Olympics and the 2004 Summer Olympics. Since 2010 Maximiliano Caldas is the Dutch women's national team coach. On the 2012 Olympics he won gold as a coach with the Dutch wome...

Rusty chats with Phoebe Schecter - American Football coach. Find out more about Phoebe here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RcosmUiA8o

Rusty catches up with Mike Ashford, rugby coach, lecturer and soon to be Doctor...

Rusty chats with Rhys Williams... writer, musician and part time wizard. Works with Craig David and played flute for Morrissey, purveyor of quality dad jokes and slightly better than RhysWilliams3

Rusty catches up with Danny Newcombe... International hockey coach, coach developer, inventor of Roller Ball and wearer of caps...

Rusty chats with Roos  currently a science and research consultant for World Rugby, where his role is basically to support all strategic decisions that involve player welfare (so injury, concussion, player health), High Performance (performance analysis, performance audits) and Law (law change and monitoring).

Fletch catches up with Geoff Parling who takes us through his rugby journey from Newcastle to Melbourne!!

Rusty and Fletch do a special pre-WC pod with Gavin Allinson, rugby coach and the man who will prevent Fletch from eating Scotch Eggs and Smarties in Service Stations for at least the next 6 weeks.

Rusty chats with Garry Banford, ex-Special Forces, culminating in him being senior recruiter for UK Special Forces. Rusty and Garry discuss principles that connect both his world and the world of sport. Amazingly Rusty manages to use the phrase 'killing baddies'.

Rusty turns to the world of S&C this week as he chats with Tom McLaughlin, High Performance Manager of Ealing Trailfinders. Some great conversation including top tips for Grass roots coaches on bringing fitness to games! Tom boasts a wealth of experience from working in professional environments such as Bristol, Connaught and Wasps since the genesis of professional rugby!

Waited a long time to write this! Fletch catches up with the legend that is Walts down in Malvern after watching some rugby together! This will be essential listening!

Rusty chats with Fiji general manager Geoff Webster

The lads sit down after a long day at Sedbergh to reminisce and reflect on 1 year of The Magic Academy and the million steps a day that Rusty is currently doing! On the agenda... Rusty's admin, Fletch's work on's and a job application for the Crusaders! 

The lads are grafting hard at the famous Sedbergh Camp this week and Rusty took the opportunity to catch up with Crista Cullen, Hockey player, drag flicker, conservationist, coach and living in a house with Fletch and Rusty for 4 days in Sedbergh....oh and by the way its probably cool to mention she's a Triple Olympian,Gold & Bronze Medallist as well as an MBE!

In this weeks episode - Rusty chats with Canterbury Crusaders Team manager Shane Fletcher.... My favourite expression in this pod...???? "Saturate them with performance" Love Magic Stig

Rusty is in Canada this week and catches up with Andy Plimer, Family man, Rugby coach, Teacher, Twitcher (Life list: 1052) Really bad hockey player, IPA enthusiast & Creator of  @RugbyCoachsCn   podcast (The second best podcast in the world!)

Rusty chats with Sports psych Elliot Newell, by his own admission a sucker for a story!! Rusty also claims this is his most favourite podcast yet..... 

For our season 2 finale, Rusty chats with Andrew Abraham... Head of Subject at Carnegie School of Sport, nurturer of young coaches, Sunday morning dad (and coach) and Status Quo mega-fan!

Rock Star alert!! Rusty can't contain his excitement in this weeks MA podcast where he gets to ask questions of one of his coaching heroes! Wayne Smith joins us for what we believe is his first ever podcast!! (Need a fact check for that though!!)

In this weeks podcast Rusty and Fletch continue the conversation around gamification

With the Cricket world cup in full flow, Rusty chats with Mo Bobat, Talent Identifiction rockstar for the ECB.