Rinck visits Master Coach/Pro Licence course in Creteil

The third module of the 2018 EHF ‘Rinck’ Convention Master Coach and Licensing Course has been held at the at the French Handball Federation (FFHB) headquarters, the Maison du Handball in Paris on the fringes of the Women's EHF EURO 2018 – and on Friday morning, 14 December, participants were treated to a special appearance from the founder of the convention, Claude Rinck himself.

“I am happy to be here and to see that when you create something, it goes further,” Rinck said to the course participants, urging them to maintain the spirit with which the first meetings regarding the ‘Rinck’ Convention took place in 1999. “Everyone brought their experience, everyone came with ideas, everyone came with good will – that was important.”

Rinck spoke of the significance of cooperation and collective will towards the maintenance of broadly applied standards in coaching education, highlighting the spirit of the ‘Rinck’ Convention as the key aspect for success.

“Europe has to be together. We cannot have eastern and western. We have to find possibilities to move forward,” said Rinck, underlining that all involved must then be on the same page and in order to develop.

16 nations represented in Creteil

Participants from 16 countries are in attendance at the course, after completing the first module in Croatia on the fringe of the Men’s EHF EURO 2018 in January and the second in Hungary in June. The course in Croatia saw record attendance with 650 coaches from the EURO host country and across Europe.

The third module opened on Monday with two days of thesis defending, where all participants presented their research conducted over the past months. The theses will be published on the EHF database.

From Wednesday to Sunday, various lectures are presented, on topics such as technology in sport, social structure in teams, neuroscience concepts, talent selection and developmental academy structure, defensive and offensive tactical trends, season planning, and anti-doping. Participants will also attend the EHF EURO 2018 Semi-finals on Friday evening.

Since the first Master Coach/Pro Licence course was organised on the fringe of the Men’s EHF EURO in Denmark in 2014, courses have been held at every European Championship. The third module currently underway offers a special opportunity for participants to see inside the FFHB’s impressive Maison du Handball in Creteil, which is home to an educational institute and a national centre complete with a main training court with cameras for analysis. In the educational institute there are 10 training and seminar rooms, as well as multimedia and documentation rooms.