Hi everyone this is Dave Wright and welcome to the Play Development Project podcast. Hopefully you're all having a great week and whilst sport has resumed in some parts of the world we're well aware that many others are still struggling with the terrible COVID-19 pandemic and we hope that you're all staying safe and well wherever you are in what is a very challenging time around the world. Now whilst it's been a little while between podcast episodes we've had a huge month on the content front end with webinars at Play Development Project. We were delighted to recently feature Top Academy coaches Nathan Phillip and Nathan Thomas on working with Foundation Phase Age Players.
PDP Technical Advisor Dan Wright hosted this one and it was a wide ranging conversation around age appropriate coaching, ball mastery, insights into the approach of NK Don's with Nathan Thomas Works and a number of other key factors when working with players aged 8 to 12. The replay of this and 13 other recent webinars are all available now on the website. Following this event we also hosted A-License Coach and University lecturer Dave Eldridge for a brilliant conversation on scanning awareness. Now this will be available on the website for me as to watch as a replay on July 14 so look out for that one.
We've also just released another live session which I was fortunate enough to deliver with some grassroots under 12 players in Australia. This practice is an 8B8 transition game, lots of fun and it allows for high repetition of forward passes running with the ball and defending outnumbered. Our coaching advisor James Kootz has also been out on the grass this week in Queensland Australia where he was filming with some under 10 and under 11 players so do look out for more live sessions on the PDP website very soon. A reminder we've got a fantastic free webinar coming up on July 13 and this will feature Yulmez Axoi, National Goalkeeping Coach at the FA.
I was very fortunate to work with Yulmez in my time at Fallen Football Club and he's a top coach and a top man so you can book your place for free on the website and join the discussion as we talk developing goalkeepers. Check out our social channels for the registration links. Today's podcast is an exit from our latest Masterclass discussion. The context is recorded prior to the pandemic so it doesn't factor in recent events but still a great conversation.
It was a pleasure to host the FA Coach Development Manager Sean Douglas for a conversation on coach development and coaching in general. Now Sean shares some insights into his experience he discusses the local landscape in Australia, challenges he faces and advice for coaches. The full version of this discussion is available now at PlayAvelopmentProject.com. Lastly a reminder you can sign up as a PDP member at PlayAvelopmentProject.com and remember you can currently access a free 30-day trial to the platform when you join.
Our team is working seven days a week to support coaches in their development so head over to the website set up and account on either a monthly or annual subscription and you'll get access to a massive library of content and be able to join our interactive Slack community to share ideas and ask questions. Thanks for joining us today. I really hope you enjoy the conversation. Hi everyone my name is Dave Wright and welcome to another PlayAvelopment Project Masterclass discussion.
Today I'm delighted to be joined by National Coach Education Manager from Football Federation Australia at Sean Douglas. Sean how are you? I'm good Dave, good. Glad to be back.
Thanks for joining us and for those that haven't read some of Sean's work he was a contributor to the very first PDP magazine we previously done a discussion on high-performance coaches with Sean. We're our Jimmy and I host them a couple of years back but great to check in with you again Sean and just a guest talk coach development and coach education with you but before we dive into that can give us just a brief background on how you found yourself in this very hit tip position that I know you're in working at FFA. Yeah I suppose as a lot of people involved in football playing background played in Asia and Singapore in particular and then up into Denmark a couple of years in there. So Holmes second ended up back in Australia, played in the old NSL days and was part of Carlton who I think could have been the first fully professional club but unfortunately couldn't sustain a fully professional club and it had been bankrupt and then from there moved back to New Zealand went to work in a local club there and had a great learning experience there where I was running 11 sessions a week as the club's director of coaching anything from eight-year-olds up to seniors and then moved into a state or a regional federation there at Auckland football or as the technical director and I've also played development coach development involved in national teams coaching with the New Zealand and involved in the national programs and academies and all sorts of things and bringing new coach development frameworks with the New Zealand.
Next step was across back across into Australia technical director of Victoria and similar role coach development played development and then finally to step into football configuration Australia. I was just running running all courses around the country at this time B's and A's and then at the final step into the head of coach education. That's a very quick wrap up. Well it's certainly a very long line obviously you've got an enormous amount of experience particularly in the last 10 years or so working with coaches and longer in that coach development space.
In terms of your role at FFA obviously Australian football is going through some amazing changes at the moment and the league is growing into this separation between the two organisations. In terms of the coach education space what are some of the key focuses for the coach development team at the moment and things you're working on? There's probably two main areas. One we're looking to evolve the courses but in particular the facilitation of the courses so looking at adult learning principles finding out what coaches know and building on this through active learning.
The second area is to provide support and learning in the workplace so rather than have coaches come away for a day or two days or seven day course and have to go back to the club. We want people there in the club that can provide support feedback whilst the coach is coaching and obviously that requires a large trained workforce of coach developers or TDS or whatever you want to call them. It's a big big ask. When you say active learning there seems to be a real shift in I guess contemporary coach education and coach development in terms of supporting people and what's your take on active learning and the importance of supporting coaches in their realistic environments?
When we work with players we want to put them in a realistic environment for them to learn and to transfer that learning into the game so it's no different with coaches. We can simulate a half time team talk on course it's even better to have the coach do that with their team in a real game and give feedback that way. I think the big part is that coaches actually do the doing they're not sitting there receiving information passively. They're set tasks they're asked to implement and reflect on that so we take them through that learning cycle as much as possible.
Yeah I think it's a really good shift. I know from my own experience in coach development in the UK when I was up there that everything was shifting in that direction and that realism and the real relationships and even being filmed where you might have conversations on camera and you're zooming in and you're listening to a one-to-one what's going on. The realism just added a lot in terms of the self reflection piece so certainly a very positive development. In terms of coaches who are perhaps the start of their coaching journey and obviously you've seen a lot of courses whether it's delivering and creating the pro license down to the introductory courses that FFA offers what are some of the common challenges that you see coaches facing when they turn up on perhaps their first course with an organisation and some of the misconceptions or challenges that are the difficulties.
That's a great question. It's probably good one to ask the coaches. Some of the things we're trying to consider are things like positive learning environments where the coaches feel they can contribute they can ask questions they can have a go without fear of judgment. We've had some good feedback recently around the change in environment or atmosphere or feeling on a course and coaches feel they're not being judged that they speak up and have opinions.
The other area I think is the coach's ability to transfer the learning from the course back into their individual context. For example the age or stage of their players the motivation of their players what facilities or resources they have available often it's perfect on a course. You can choose what the players you want you've got everything's available there you have plenty of time to plan your training sessions so taking those things and then putting them back into the real world is sometimes difficult and I think the other thing is and I think it's part of a normal learning process but it becomes sort of a copy culture and we want coaches to bring their own personality to the process. We teach a process because we know it will give a solid foundation for coaching and then to move from that but bring their own personality you know don't copy what the facilitator or the coach developer is showing on the course.
Yeah absolutely it's really interesting and I think that's something that at PDP we've always tried to promote is to get away from that actually look at adapting things and creating the relative to your players and so on. In terms of in terms of some of those I guess approaches for new coaches when they get on the course and they're looking at finding the answers what do you sort of think they should be looking to go away with so when you're going back into those environments is it a case of just picking the bits that you like from courses or should you just take it all and try and apply it I mean it's obviously it can be quite overwhelming for those who are first attending a course and taking a lot of information. Yeah I think that's part of the change in the course delivery is each area or module or what you're going to call it has a reflection piece and we try and encourage coaches to think about how does this apply to me how could I implement it within my context so then they sort of come away with each module a section where it's a person's development or an action plan that they can put in direction and what I'd say is just pick one of those areas at a time and try it out and you know we talk about that learning process where it's like cooking you know at first when we start cooking we follow a recipe to the letter so we copy and then we start when we get confident that we start to change ingredients put different amounts of ingredients in we we tinker with it sometimes it's crap you know it comes out nice and bad sometimes it's fantastic and we learn through that process of trial and error so I think that's an important thing for coaches don't be afraid of making mistakes go and have a go and change things and see what the outcomes or the impacts are. Yeah I could not agree more with those sentiments around experimentation and taking risks if we're going to ask players to make decisions a big creative business coaches we should be brave enough to do the same thing.
In terms of you know developing coaches and looking to seek out and leave with as much knowledge on that coach film or pathway journey do you think it's a case of you know they need to go in there and obviously there's a lot of peer-to-peer learning as well within the environment so sometimes I've found of course as for example this expectation that the federation will tell and then we'll go and take that knowledge away which we kind of touched on but is it a case of also looking at that peer-to-peer learning piece and seeing the upside of being in a group of people who are immersed in something enthusiastic about something and what you can learn from each other. Yeah I mean that's a major part of the course so I love working in this because I learn something from every coach on every single course that I'm involved with you know I often have coffees and chats with coaches after courses and I'm always learning so I think that mindset that you can gain from your fellow coaches you can gain from the course you can gain from those running courses is really important you know you can get learning from anywhere it's not just on a course yeah definitely it's a very good point now obviously self-reflection is an area which you've touched on in terms of the way perhaps some of the courses have been delivered in that self-reflection piece between modules or between contact time this is an area you're an expert in really and you've done a lot of research on the past are you able to dive into this in terms of practical advice for coaches around how they can embrace reflection in their own coaching practice encourage amongst the players and for you why it's so valuable in the coach development space. Yeah I wouldn't say I'm an expert but I would encourage coaches to implement what I call an action learning process so you know actively plan what you're going to try and prove in your coaching including how you will measure your improvement or your impact who you're going to get to give you feedback have a guy putting that into practice in that plan and then critically reflect on what you plan to do and what happened and then that leads into the plan again so it's a cyclical process one thing I would say is that many coaches tend to default to reflecting on the player performance or what the players did when they've got to keep the spotlight on themselves so what did I do that caused the player to do that or what was my feedback like or how do my behavior affect performance I think that's a to keep that spotlight on you can be difficult at times yeah absolutely are there certain strategies you would advise implementing it into how you reflect so for some it might be the power of video for others it might be writing things down do you see a variety when you see effective coaches actually implementing these ideas yeah it depends on what they were improved so taking a very simple one we see a lot of coaches that are intervening a lot and there's a lot of time spent with the players are still glistening and not actively playing so it's something as simple as a time duration some of them will stop watch every time the coach stops it and then you can just get a timeline yeah so the tools that you use you know video all those things may depend on what you want to improve yeah it's certainly something to be very aware of in the ball rolling time for me or something that we all get better with over time I think as we become more confident head towards that sort of you know getting more confident as a chef as you the nice analogy used earlier in terms of coaches I think a real first world problem for a lot of coaches is most of them are volunteers they might be getting doing part-time roles if they're getting paid at all but most coaches are very time poor because you know we're all juggling different commitments in terms of actually getting on the grass with players you know you've got a couple of sessions a week probably in a grass roots environment if you're lucky what kind of advice do you have in terms of that limited prep time and how to actually get out there and implement a session when you are very time poor and perhaps it's a you know five ten minutes in the car before you get out on the grass for a lot of people yeah I mean we often sound of course it's not to take exercises from the book or youtube or something like that because they don't suit your players but often a time poor coach you have to do something like that you know find some activities that work for you and then don't be afraid to adapt them for your players for your style of play whatever you'll stage your age that you're working on ideally if you do have time yeah then you're looking to design sessions based on the needs of your players that would be the ideal but yeah like I said I often run out of time myself and I have a few go-to activities that I know work well yeah you know sometimes I'm running from running the pro license all day going to run a session I just haven't had time to design one I'm sort of thinking through the things that link to what I want to work on and maybe change or adapt on the run during a session sometimes I often find my plan that I write on paper is not exactly what I deliver I'll observe and reflect in the moment you know so there's reflection after a session but there's reflection during the session and I'll think I can do this better I can change this I think taking the time to stand back and observe during a session and think don't be afraid to let the players play and think about better what will change what area change what things can I change to you know get a different outcome or behavior yeah look I think that's really sound advice as you're speaking I'm sort of reflecting on a I remember I was lucky enough to have been part that observed me in the UK and I delivered a session as part of my A license assessment where I'd clearly claimed it out we talked it through before presented what I was going to deliver and I stuck to that plan almost by default because I was thinking while I'm being observed and one of the keys that's a feedback excuse me for me was that actually the first part was going really well you didn't need to change that because the outcome you're looking for it was a transition practice did you even need to progress to the last but where it took the players maybe six eight minutes to actually learn the session and then they got into the flow so I actually disrupted the flow and I think it was a great it was a really nice conversation at the end to think actually even in the sort of assessment environment where I'm being observed I could have still just adapted on the run and adjusted to what I see I think that's something coaches need to be doing yeah and I think as you say before it comes with a bit more experience and a bit more comfort in who you are and what you're doing you know the more we do it the more we get used to it and at the end of the day the players are playing they don't know what's going on inside you're thinking out yeah definitely look at we can talk about some of the things that you're looking to implement on the courses and some of the changes but one of the challenges for coaches is that time in between so you know if you have a week of contact time for example and then you go away for three or four months before you're back on course that's where coaches are obviously practicing and learning and trying things but how does if you fail and give it to support those coaches between courses or between contact time yeah and as part of the former course we have the the obviously the distance learning tasks but our main focus is going to be so those two areas in every community club we want what we call a club coach coordinator it's a program we've we've started the role of that person is quite broad so it can be at one end just someone who can sign post or be a contact for coaches so if I'm in my local community club and I want to learn more about coaching I go and ask my club coach coordinator when the next course is or how do I find the goals at the other end of that role spectrum is someone who's been coaching in the club for two three four five years can come and watch my session can come and give me some advice or meet with me I'm gonna have a coffee and talk through how do I hurt the cats so to speak and I think the key part of that person's role is to make the coach feel valued and supported that's no case of here's your bag of balls at the start of the season and good luck we'll see at the end so that person is there to make the coach feel supported and provided by us we've had some good feedback I mean it's a bit anecdotal we haven't measured the impact right across the country yet but in some regions over two or three years we've had a couple of clubs that have not lost the coach in Australia with community coaches being volunteers there's continual turnover so I think the just that feeling of feeling valued and having support coaches are actually staying and we all know we can only get better if we continue to do something yeah absolutely so it's been good and then the other areas club technical directors so higher up the chain up the youth development pathways we're looking to employ some training and development for technical directors around there well and how they can support coaches thanks for joining us on the Play Development Project podcast you can follow us on twitter and instagram at Play A DP or find us on Facebook don't forget to head over to play development project.com where you can sign up to our progressive coaching community and gain access to our wide variety of 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