How to Coach a Red Head
What to give a player when they can’t control what just happened
Principle: Two Heads
Back on the local soccer pitch this week.
We’ve all coached that player. The one who cares more than everyone else — more than the score sometimes. When they’re channelled, they’re a weapon. When they’re not, they’re a liability.
One bad call. One crunching challenge. One tactical decision they disagree with.
And suddenly you’re managing a situation rather than coaching a game.
In high-performance sport, there’s a useful frame for this: the idea of the red head and the blue head.
Red head is the reactive, emotionally charged state — impulse without direction. Blue head is composed, clear, purposeful — still competitive, still intense, but in control of the next action.
The goal isn’t to eliminate the red head. These players are often your most competitive, most committed — and that edge is worth protecting.
The goal is to give them a bridge back to blue.
Perspective: It’s Not a Character Problem
The mistake most coaches make with these players is treating the reaction as a character issue.
“He’s too hot-headed.” “She can’t handle pressure.” “We need someone more composed.”
What they’re describing is an absence of structure — not an absence of character. A fiery player who reacts badly to a bad call hasn’t failed a personality test. They’ve never been given a repeatable process to run when it matters.
The difference between elite environments and the rest isn’t that their players don’t go red. It’s that those players have a script for what to do when they do.
Not suppression. Structure.
Story: Gilbert Enoka and the All Blacks’ Microstructure
Gilbert Enoka — mental skills coach with the All Blacks for over two decades — worked with some of the most competitive athletes in world rugby. Players wired, by design, to fight.
In Become Unstoppable, he describes the moment he asked a few of his more fiery players to rate their mindset when a referee called a decision against them — one being calm, ten being nuclear.
“Well, I usually want to punch them in the head,” said one player. “So… an eleven.”
Enoka introduced a simple microstructure for those flashpoint moments. The player’s response was immediate.
“Bert, that’s bullshit.”
He tried it anyway.
Step 1: Walk away from the official.
Step 2: Connect with the nearest teammate. Ask one question: What are you seeing?
Step 3: Assess the situation, draw breath, move onto the next task.
Three steps. A few seconds. Non-negotiable.
Not designed to make them feel better. Designed to give the brain something to do before the emotion made the decision for them.
After the next match, the player scored his flashpoint moments at a 6 or 7.
Down from eleven.
He didn’t become less competitive. He became more effective at exactly the moments that cost teams the most.
Question:
Think about the red heads in your environment.
Do they have a structure for those moments — or are you hoping they’ll find their way back to blue on their own?
Closing Thought:
You can’t coach composure in the moment it’s needed.
You build the structure before it is.
A microstructure isn’t therapy. It’s preparation.
The reactive player doesn’t need a different personality.
They need something to do.
Until next week,
Caleb Cousens