John Simmonds has been appointed Coach Development Lead for all senior and youth teams in representative rugby. Amongst others, John’s roles will include:

• Providing high-quality coaching support to strengthen the performance of all coaches throughout Surrey Rugby representative teams.
• Developing a culture across each representative team that encourages the sharing and spread of best practice between different teams. To include the sharing of different perspectives on coaching, the challenging of beliefs and to make development as accessible as possible; all with the aim of providing excellent coaching, every time, for every player in the representative teams.
• Ensuring clear messaging across (1) Surrey Rugby culture and (2) key principles of attack and defence that constitute the DNA of Surrey Rugby.

John is currently part of the senior men’s coaching team at Esher Rugby but has over the past 10 years coached Surrey boys representative teams across all age groups (U13 – U20) as well as coaching Harlequins DPP and been a part of London and South East Regional player assessment team. He is a level 3 coach, coach mentor as well as the Rugby Development Officer at Esher Rugby.

John will report to the Chair of Rugby Development.