My coaching journey so far........
Part 1 -
Once I’d realised the dream of becoming a professional footballer was over, due to a number of injuries, mainly a ruptured Anterior Cruciate, and possibly a lack of desire after that. I knew that I wanted to stay within football in one shape or form.
Firstly, I looked into the physiotherapy side of the game as I was studying Anatomy & Physiology at A Levels but meant I had to go to University to do this and I didn’t like the idea of living on the poverty line!! Therefore, following some sound advice from my step father, who had a long distinguished career in football, I decided to go into coaching.
The first thing I did was book onto a Junior Team Managers (JTM) Course as an introductory into coaching junior teams. Secondly, before the course, I found a junior team that I could assist with their training. This team was Chatteris Town Youths U11’s and I initially helped a family friend, Glen Heading, with the training. Setting out the equipment and collecting in but mainly observing the things they put on for training. Most of the practises involved the “dreaded line drills” that led to lots of disruptive behaviour. Therefore I leant a few ‘what not to do’s, but more good practises’!!
After I had been on the JTM Course and I had completed my Emergency 1st Aid training I was allowed to take training with the team and soon learned that line drills are difficult to manage but the experience set me up well. From the JTM Course I picked up that the planning and preparation was very important to putting on a good session. With this in mind, I was always over the Cromwell School field at least 30 mins before the players arrived so that everything was in place for my session. At 18yrs the hardest aspect I found was dealing with issues from behaviour but I passed these onto the team manager if I couldn’t deal with them myself. After the session I would evaluate how the session went and I felt disappointed if it wasn’t enjoyable for the players which led to me going into my Saturday game in the wrong frame of mind!!
From this I decided to book on my FA Level 2 Qualification and luckily I had the support of my Grandparents who offered to pay the money for this. I attended the course that was put on by the excellent Cambs FA and they had drafted in from Hertfordshire a coach called Robbie O’Keefe who worked with Hitchin Town’s Youth Scheme at the time. To this day I feel that Robbie is one of the best coaches I have ever seen and the one thing that stuck in my mind was his personality as a coach: approachable, kind, honest, punctual, prepared, smart and knowledgeable. Over those 6 intense days I took in an incredible amount of information regarding warm ups, sessions, planning, delivery, teaching styles and evaluation. These things are still with me today. Unfortunately, my circumstances changed at my workplace and I was promoted so my workload increased, meaning that I was unable to complete my logbook and take my assessment. This also meant that I was unable to coach for a time until work had settled down again.
Once work had quietened down I started to coach for Leigh Matthews’s U13 squad on a Friday evening for an hour and I also booked onto another Level 2 course. By this time the format had changed again with the small sided games changed to 6v6. Leigh’s U13’s were a very promising squad with a number of boys who had been with pro clubs. Working with this squad was excellent as Leigh provided a ball each for the session so it enabled me to work on their manipulation skills. In between this training, my Level 2 course was tutored by the infamous John Beck, who showed himself to be a very knowledgeable coach but a very hard task master in his mentoring. Again I picked a lot of new sessions and tips on how to deliver: mainly in the command form of delivery. “The John Beck way or the highway”.
To be continued.................................................