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Hi everyone, welcome to another Play Developer Project monthly wrap. My name is Dave Wright, and once again I'm joined by PDP technical advisor Dan Wright. Dan, how are you doing? Really good, thank you.
How are you today? I'm good mate. I'm good. We're a little bit overdue this month for the wrap, but we're going to cover off the content we produced in April and shoot some summaries out there in the form of sound bites and written content.
So what we're going to look at is a couple of masterclass discussions which we produced. We had three new blogs in April, so it was a busy month on the written front, a research review from Professor Bill Harper and a session plan which I know you designed. So it was a really busy month, and first up we're going to start with a recap of our masterclass webinar which featured an insight into Watford F.C. with Rob Morris and Martin Prickett.
So here's the clip. I think the best example I've got is from a goalkeeper Jonathan bombs. Now Bondi was back at Watford. This is going back probably good 2004, 2005.
Bondi is a 10 year old 11 year old. He was next in York. He was technically very good. Good move around and then grew and grew and grew and grew and got stiffer and stiffer and stiffer and stiffer and all throughout his YDP phase.
It was like having a WIPOP stick man in golf. And just there were two parts here. We had three parts here. One, we just kept going with him.
We just kept working on all the things we normally do to try and retrain his movements. Sports science team were excellent and they had a whole set of movement patterns that they do, pre training, post training and at home. The videos were brilliant, but they were trying to stretch the life and go into his muscles. But also probably the most important was the psychological support you received.
I remember we played Arsenal one Sunday morning and I came out of shot and it was like watching just in pure, horrid slow motion, this ball, dribble towards the post and for Bondi, just not being able to move his bodies or limbs fast enough to get over there and actually to get down to it. But over there, and this will be of course probably five years this programme went on for. Then when he got to 17, he then also unfinished his unbelievable ghost fur, was six foot eight and then had the potential to become quite a good goalkeeper. All he had to do then is go to college at year.
We don't have a catch all the game. In the end, Bondi made first team and he played a red in his play for Colchester. He played for another 21. So he's had a career out of it.
He's still a culture to now, I think. I don't know what I'm doing now, he's just had a career out of it. But I think the other thing is that what a lot of coaches might look at and go, well, you know, we've done something with him from a sports science perspective in terms of an agility programme and three weeks later he's been a great player. And of course, he isn't.
This takes years to get right. And it's just how slow it takes, I think, is what a lot of coaches miss. It just does take a long time. And although you may never see the benefits of what you're doing, you still have to do it because the benefits will be there.
You might not see the benefits until the motion you're on par for is completed back when they're 17, 18. So again, time and understanding is a big thing. But we're going back to your original question. Yes, to be able to collaborate and use those players and for injury prevention and all those kind of things, it just comes down again, that's what the individual needs.
They all need the same messages. Look after your body, think, well, stay determined, they only need the same messages. But then we need to know our players and then know how best to support those players. So Dan, a really insightful sort of story or anecdote there on long term play development from Martin.
What were the key takeaways from the club and I guess the conversation in general? Yes, this was a really sort of detailed conversation. Wasn't it quite a long one? I think this clip is showing how you're Martin's talking about what you're doing today and how you're having the player today.
It might not play off for sort of four or five years. He talked about players going through a growth spurt and struggling with coordination and they've done all this work with the physios and he wasn't seeing an immediate reaction. The physios and the S&C team getting a little bit frustrated by saying, we're doing all this work but we're not seeing anything. And then Martin was saying, yeah, well, of course you weren't.
You know, I take years and years and I think that sort of long term sort of thinking in the short term, I suppose, it's about what plans we've been putting in place and how patient are we to see and what this young player will look like. And as Martin said, this is now a guy playing professional football. But there's a really good chat and these are two guys working at the Coldface, working at Academy full time. So lots of kind of stories and similar messages to the ones we've promoted at the PDP, I guess.
What will you take away from this one? Yeah, I think the long term vision when it comes to the club, I mean, just that patience and understanding that players are going to have dips and players are going to have times where we're going to work with at the moment. We've got such a mix of sizes. We've got kids who are in that sort of under 15 bracket who are absolutely tiny and we've got some others who are well advanced physically.
So I think that sort of patience and that long term view really stood out. But as you say, a really insightful conversation from an academy that's been producing players for a long time. So some really good insight from both of them. Yeah, really good.
Okay. So the next master class was from Jimmy Vorn. And this was part three of his kind of study of FC Barcelona. So this one looked at legends and icons.
I know you've hosted this chat with Jimmy. So what kind of your thoughts before we dive into the field? Look, I think this is a really, really good conversation. It's I guess an in depth look at Jimmy's research with a particular focus on this discussion around some of the really big individual cultural influences and some of those people who have affected the playing style over the years at Barcelona.
Cool. Let's get into it. Now, then. Okay.
So what we can see there is this idea that the role models for FC Barcelona a lot of the time have been foreigners. So people that have come in and as they say in the video have understood the culture contributed to it, but then also being able to kind of innovate and around it as well. So I think it this idea moves like the recognition or creates the recognition that we're not just talking about culture being a fixed thing. It's a dynamic that is influenced by the people in it and the people that come into it as well.
So being an open culture and being a culture that has accepted biodiversity and accepted refugees and accepted people coming in for years and years has been influenced by those foreigners. And firstly Barcelona, those key ones are John Campa the founder. Kubala, we just saw in the video Hungarian refugee. And then obviously, yeah, I'm quite filled with talk about as well.
And then the more modern examples could be people like Rondini and of course, Messi today. So Dan, a nice short clip there from Jimmy's PhD in the latest installment of that series. What were some of your key takeaways in that clip? Yeah, I think in this clip, Jimmy's talking about the foreign influence in Barcelona.
So I was actually at Barcelona's game at the weekend, but I've been in the S's last match and to see some of this kind of cultural influence is really interesting. So it's obviously a club that's steeped in history and you know, obviously one of the most successful clubs of all time where they've always had a foreign influence. So it's set up by Gampa and they've always had some kind of immigrants in the team and that's come all the way through to the influence of Croy Fonn and Of The Pitch and then players like Messi and Ronaldinho and Neymar and Ettor and all these kind of players. I think Jimmy's done a really good job of bringing that all together and making it understandable.
How about for you? Yeah, look, I think throughout the series, I've been lucky enough to interview Jim through each step of it. We've sort of talked initially from the broader cultural climate and the history of Barcelona from the farming routes right through to the sort of space and the creation of architecture and how that's reflected on the pitch. And it can be seen in the style of play.
And now with this discussion, it was about diving into some of those individuals and real influences around the club. So it's some great insight inside it. As you said earlier, it's a fascinating cultural case out of the football and one that everybody around the world looks to in terms of understanding how to develop players and obviously what success looks like in terms of playing style and being true to a philosophy. So really interesting discussion.
Next, we're going to head towards our latest research review from Professor William Harper and Bill has put together a research review on creativity. Dan, what were your thoughts on this one? Yeah, I think this is interesting because creativity is a word that a lot of sports coaches are using. I think, you know, we want creative players, we want problem solvers.
But what does that actually mean? But probably more importantly, how do we foster that environment to encourage creativity and creativity to play? So that was kind of my takeaway of what creative it is and how we build that environment to develop that environment for it to happen more frequently. How about for you?
Yeah, I think it's just about those definitions. I think depending on whatever sport you're involved in, there's certain creative moments that are obvious. But what does creativity actually mean? And how do we coach it?
It's a really nice little review in terms of understanding a great paper. So recommend our listeners and viewers get over and have a look at that one. We certainly, as we said, had a busy month in the content front and Dan, you put together our last session plan for last month in April and it was a four goal game. Do you know what's explained a little bit about that session and where it may be relevant, age and stage, et cetera?
Yeah, I think it's quite adaptable in terms of numbers and age and stage, obviously you have adapted the space and the end zones to suit your players. But basically the practice was looking at players getting on kind of a half turn and opening up to play forwards and then that weight of pasta finds you in the end zones. So forward pass it and forward running. So quite a simple session that could be used with players in that foundation phase or you could make it a little bit more complex with off sidelines and stuff like that for YDP players and beyond.
So something that I've used quite frequently with the guys I coach and something that's quite enjoyable, I think. Yeah, certainly a session I'll be having a look at and trying to adapt for myself at some stage and make great work. Yeah, so where are we going next? We're going to the blogs next?
I think that the most successful blog, those kind of two arguments I suppose this month, between you and Jimmy fighting out for the number one spot on the PDP website, but your blog was around the Aussie kind of ball tempering, which you took a lot of time to write on. Yeah, look, I think it's been really interesting, obviously I've made the transition personally from England to Australia recently and it's been really fascinating to see the cultural differences in sport and how things are progressing in the UK and perhaps how things are struggling in Australian sport. And I think the ball tampering scandal really resonated with me in the sense that it was something that just blew up massively in the media here. And for me it was an absolute reflection on the style of play that the Australian cricket team had been playing with for so long.
So as a Kiwi, it was a team that obviously there's always been a rivalry between New Zealand and Australia. And it's one of those things where you sort of love to hate the Australian cricket team, they were always so good, they're always so talented. But in this case, the last few years they haven't exactly covered themselves in pride. So I was sort of motivated to write about this from a perspective that the behaviour that was happening on the pitch was potentially representing and reflecting the culture that's happening in youth development where there is a huge focus here still on winning as the key metric.
So you could almost have sympathy as hard as it is with somebody like a Steve Smith or Dave Warner. And so maybe that's the only environment of the only way they never know. And there's never been another consequence. So it was something I was very passionate about and it's why I wrote about it.
And subsequently I was lucky enough to be invited by Cricket Australia to go on to spend the day with their under-16s and look at their talent pathways and some of the really good things they're doing and some of the things they're looking to change. So it's been a really interesting topic down under and I guess globally as well, it's certainly called the headlines. Yeah, kind of an iconic moment of winning at all costs I think. That's the message we're sending out but also the message we're sending to kids that winning is more important than anything.
I mean I'm not a bit cricket fan but that was the message that I took away. Yeah, certainly I think what came to a hit is that there was a cost. There was a cost financially, personally to reputation to the sport in this country, it really did damage the brand of Australian cricket and it's been fascinating to see it unfold and I'm also really excited to see the redemption stories that will soon follow. It's going to be very interesting to see.
The next blog we had was from John O'Sullivan over there in the States at Changing the Game Project and John shared an article around, you know, winners youth sports actually going to serve the needs of young people. So Dan, what were your thoughts on this one? Yeah, this was a really good read and I think for me it was about what is the purpose of sport. So I think at the pointy end as you would say, it's about performance, it's about elite whatever that means, it's about preparing players to have a career in sport, to become professional.
But that's just a really, really small percentage of sport. I think in this article John's talking about participation, he's talking about the benefits socially and physically of playing sport and for a lot of the time that the sport is viewed by adults, with adult lens and is it actually going to be kind of reshape for what the kids want and what the kids need? And if we do more of that, perhaps that participation will go up and then maybe the spinoff of that is that we'll have more pros and more kind of elite players. So a really good read, I really enjoyed that one.
Yeah, certainly. And I think just the key points around sport as you know, beneficial in the community and sport for social good is so important that, and I know dropouts has been a real issue in American sport across the board and there's a battle to keep players interested in whether that's society changing in general, whether that's a US-specific issue, that sort of up and debate. But it was an article that really brings on the key purposes of why we play and that is the operative word. The last blog we had was from our lead researcher, Jimmy Vaughn, as you mentioned earlier, and it was a fantastic article, including some practical video.
Also, when I saw feedback, I know he's had feedback online from Rick Shuttaworth and within the article had feedback from both of us and more importantly, probably Mark Uton who is excellent with his feedback around this. So what were your takeaways from this type of content that Jimmy's produced? Yeah, first of all, I think this is the way forward isn't it? There's lots of articles and research and debates on Twitter and Facebook about the academic stuff versus the practical stuff and what Jimmy did was a really good job of using those together.
So there's video examples of what a constraint that approach looks like and then different opinions from Jimmy and the people that watched the videos about what we're actually seeing and that kind of change of behavior. So Jimmy, we'll talk a lot about the interactions between players, interactions between the constraints and I think what we saw was that live and Jimmy put a lot of work into this and I really enjoyed watching it and reading this. And again, a really popular blog that I think a lot of people have looked at. Yeah, and I think the nature of the session being a 3v3 with a very simple task of trying to break lines or screen if you're on the out of position team.
It was a nice way to look at it. And of course, Jimmy also went in sort of feedback from Professor Keith Davis which was very interesting to have his thoughts as well. So highly recommend that our listeners and viewers go over there and check out that blog. It was a fantastic read.
Any final thoughts on this month's wrap for you Dan? Yeah, I think what we're doing now is kind of covering all the bases. So we've talked about the research reviews which is very kind of done the academic end. We've got guys talking about participation sport.
We've got Jimmy kind of fusing those two things together. We've got yourself talking about different sports. So it's kind of getting to a more kind of holistic places. And so lots, lots to read, lots to see and deal on the website.
Certainly. And for those who are listening who haven't joined head over to Play Development Project.com, sign up for your membership and you'll get access to all of our extensive content which is an enormous library of video and written resource. Dan, thanks again for your time. Great to have you on board.
No worries Matt. Seriously. We'll look forward to another Play Development Project monthly wrap very soon. Thanks for joining us on the Play Development Project Podcast.
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