On the Grass: Dave Wright on Ego

Hello and welcome to On The Grass, the idea of this show is to talk to coaches working in the pallet development space about their learnings and things they're doing with their players. Today we're joined by familiar voice. The first question that we should all have in mind as adults in youth sport is this best for the children, is this best for the player, is this best for the athlete concerned because if it's not, why are we doing it? That's Dave Wright.

Dave's going to talk to us about parking his eco, working with individuals and things that he's learned over his 17 year coaching journey. Hope you enjoy the show. Welcome to On The Grass with me Dan Wright, um, role reversal today. Today I'm talking today.

Right Dave, how are you? I'm good. I'm really excited to be on the other side of the equation. It's quite interesting.

Yeah, it's very strange. It's normally you are the ones doing all the intros and pepper and people questions, but today we have a little role reversal. So straight into it, Dave, 60 second challenge to tell people who you are and kind of what you do. All right.

So obviously my name is Dave Wright. Hopefully some people have heard that on the PDP by now. Been coaching 17 years. The Art of my coaching journey probably far too young in New Zealand, working with high school teams and then went through to work with some of the Federation or representative teams in the area.

Really enjoyable experience. Had some good mentors in New Zealand. Spent five years in Sydney after leaving Auckland in 2008. Did a lot of coaching there with football New South Wales and then local club there and some competitions in the Eastern suburbs, which was great fun.

And then after my brother and I had a business together in Sydney and we sold that business both decided to do different things and PDP emerged out of that eventually, but that led to a move to London. And lucky enough to spend five years coaching in London within the academy scene and during that time, work my way through a lot of the FA courses, including my UA for a license and obviously got to spend a lot of time coaching and studying with yourself Dan. So after the time in London, move back to Melbourne, which I spent some time here, but I never lived here and have been here for just over 18 months, currently working with Melbourne Victory Football Club with the under 20th group. So it's been very interesting and a great time in the last few years in terms of learning.

Fantastic. So there's many different ways we could kind of take this conversation and obviously you get to talk about this through the PDP. But I thought a good way to go today would be you get to interview a lot of guests and a lot of interesting coaches. And how is that kind of challenge your thoughts or challenge your traditional ideas of coaching and what have been the learnings on that journey for you?

Look, it's a really privileged position. I was lucky enough to be recording with John O'Sullivan, who's over changing the game project, who's got a great website himself over there. And John's on a similar boat where he hosts his own podcast and we spoke about this both on-air and off-air around the benefit of just speaking with so many people. And I think for me, I've just learned a massive amount and it's almost like doing a Masters on the run.

You sort of feel like I'm talking to all of these unbelievably experienced coaches about what coaching is, what their environments look like, what their experiences are, the different types of players they work with, different stories of players have come through under them. And it's just been a massive opportunity in terms of picking people's brains and being able to sit there quietly and listen, which is a skill I think personally I've always been trying to get better at. And as coaches, we need to get better at because we can often feel like we have to impose ourselves. But it has really shifted my view on what coaching is and how we can really develop and optimize environments for children.

So one of the ideas that you've written about quite a lot is what is the traditional kind of view of coaching and how that's changed for you. And you've written a bit about Ego, can you talk to people about that or you understand that? Yeah, I think it kind of started when I moved to the UK. And I was so lucky to get an opportunity at Ringford Football Club.

Really, thanks to Stuart English. I think he probably saw that I had something a little bit different in terms of my experience. He made the age that I was at the time coming into the academy and obviously being from outside the UK. It was one of those things where the first exposure to kind of tracksuit culture was in England.

And I think as coaches, whether you're working for a school team, a club team, an academy, it doesn't matter. You have to have a degree of confidence to go on coach, you have to have a degree of confidence to go on stand in front of people. But I think when I started my be license, I remember being quite intimidated. I turned up and I didn't particularly have a club affiliation at the start of the course.

I was still sort of working my way into Brinford through Dernson Graf there. And I just turned up in my black-headed ass tracksuit. And suddenly I'm sitting around and these guys were experts and asking me and all of these kids, which for a Kiwi who just arrived in London, I was just like, this is fantastic. All these guys in these top clubs.

And I guess I spent a lot of time around the academy scene. And I often felt that sometimes the tracksuit was a mask of coaches and securities. We all feel like we have to be so confident and have to have the answers and have to be able to tell the players what the solutions are. But again, citing another expert, we were lucky enough to interview recently in Aaron Danks.

He sort of said, I think it was at the start of the interview around the more he coaches, the less he sort of realises he knows. And I think that kind of angle around how tracksuit culture can potentially mask what we, how we should behave and the interpretation that it's not okay to say that we don't know the answer or that we're learning or that we need to get better in the series. So I think that kind of also ties into dominant masculine paradigms. Again, just speaking from the male coaching perspective that men are expected to, you know, boys don't cry and men are expected to be strong and know the answers.

And all of these kind of narratives, which simmer away, have just made me reflect a lot on where ego sits in coaching. And then the final piece of that I think is the best coaches that I've been lucky enough to speak to over the years have all had that common thread of being persistent learners and quite humble and open. And I think those guys who I've sat with, whether it's on the phone or on Skype and interview or face-to-face, it's just been a real eye-opener to see some of the quality coaches and some of their attitudes towards learning and not really putting their ego first, putting the players first. And that's just stuck with me.

And it's a theme that I think is really critical in coaching and youth development. And so in terms of practical advice, how has that impacted your coaching and what are the differences if we look, if we look now and saw Dave coach versus what Dave looked like 15 years ago, how has that impacted perhaps sessions or how you work with players or how you watch games? Well, I think, I mean, I do cringe when I think about being a 19-year-old coach and I just loved every minute of it. Like I didn't look at, sort of sit out to get into coaching, but I just fell into it after being offered to do some coaching work and suddenly found myself with a couple of teams and working 25 hours a week coaching while I was studying at university.

And I think back then, my perception of the coach was leadership, motivator, trying to inspire, but there wasn't a lot of sort of, I guess, depth to the understanding of what coaching is because it would be a take a group of people, inspire them, motivate them, put them into a shape, let's go and do our best and off we go. And you'd be picking sessions offline or picking bits up and just going, okay, well, I'll just do that, which I think is what happens when a lot of people first start out. And I was certainly the same. So I think what's changed is that I think I don't take it.

I think at times the tracks of culture can lead to it being taken so, so seriously. Now I'm serious in terms of the way I prepare, the way I plan, the way I like to deliver, making sure that the players get the best from me because again, Stuart English, when I interviewed Herman up there at Birmingham City, he said, you've got to go out and put a performance on for the players. I think there is a degree of that. But at the same time, you've got to have some fun with it.

And I don't think whether it's first-team or performance environments or whether it's under rates, everything should be fun that we do and we should be sitting out, have some fun, have a laugh and not be too serious. And I think it's important that we don't get too serious too soon. But I would also say if I fast forward 17 years, my understanding of what I believe coaching is has changed significantly as well. And the environment being at the center of that, again, driven by a lot of what we've done at PDP is pretty important.

Yeah, it's just kind of moving that spotlight from maybe the culture in that Hollywood movie scenario where he's chatting and screaming, he's got his clipboard and the brilliant team half-time team talks, all that kind of stuff. So I think you've talked a lot about the focus on individuals and developing individuals at all age groups, not just in the kind of foundational YDP age groups. What does that look like for you and how important is it to focus on individuals in sessions and games? I think it's critical.

I think it's essential. I think it's something that's really only struck me in the last seven or eight years. I think I can look back on my time when I was in Sydney and think about the fact that I was coaching a team. I had good relationships with the players, I knew my players, and I knew potentially how to communicate with one compared to the other.

But I think it was a realization that when I was exposed to Academy football, and there's a lot of people that knock Academy football from the outside, because it's a lot of pressure and there can be tough environments. But also there's a lot of good stuff that happens in Academy football. And sometimes that can be brushed aside in the world of social or sort of the petty arguments that happen on Twitter and so on. Because I think there's so many great opportunities for the kids that do get a chance in there.

And whilst they're out, you do hear horror stories and you read books like No Hunger and Paradise and you see the good and the bad. I think essentially there's a lot of good stuff that happens. And when I was first exposed to that, everything that we did at Brimford and particularly again under Stu English there was around developing those individuals, putting a plan in place. Now whether that's working with foundation players and just having a did I achieve my target, yes or no on the day, or it's putting a more comprehensive plan in place around the four corner model, which obviously we've spoken about before, or however your club does it.

I think every individual is different. Every individual's context is different. All of those interact both with the coach and with the group. So there's a lot of dynamics at play with and with an any team environment.

But if we don't coach to the individual, then I think we're failing the players. Now there's lots we can talk about in terms of how that looks on the grass and how you can actually implement that. But I think it's absolutely critical in the way we coach. Yeah.

And I think I would agree kind of in my coaching journey, it's been similar. I think initially you start off interested in formations and shapes and tactics and like you said, your coaching team. And I still think you do coach a team, whatever age group you work with, but the focus on those individuals, especially in the development pathway to help them get better at the stuff they need to get better at or make the stuff that they're good at elite. Although I know you hate that word.

Make it a super strength. I think it's really important. I'm conscious that we're trying to get people practical advice. And as most people would talk to what happens in academies is they get to see that players for 15 hours a week.

Of course, they can have individual learning plans. They've got more coaches than they need. They can have one coach working with one player. What would be some kind of easy steps?

If you imagine people working in grassroots, maybe volunteers, parents, they've got 12 kids, there's only one coach, they've got a full-time job. How can they still kind of plan for individuals in their weekly sessions? Look, I think it's a question I've thought about a little bit and I've been asked in a couple of other interviews and so on. But I think the key thing is if you first of all get to know your players, which is not something that happens in week one of the season, it takes time, that's going to help you start to guide them and shape some of their objectives potentially.

I think a quick way to go about it at the start of the year could be as simple as a form. What do you think your best attribute is? What would you like to work on? What do you enjoy the most at football and get the kids to actually fill that in and feed it back to you?

So if you've only got that one contact or two contacts a week in grassroots football, then what you could do is take some of that information that you either pick up over the first month, six weeks when you're starting to observe or learn about your players, or it could be some kind of quick survey or even better maybe you sacrifice a session and on that, where you would have been on the grass, maybe you just have a night, where you just have five to ten minutes sit down with the players. I think those regular sit downs, where you can actually ask players how they're going and everything okay in life as well as football, find out what they love about the environment, find out where they're struggling, find out a little bit about the peer group situation, the social interactions in the group. Then you can start painting a picture and putting plans in place in terms of, okay, tonight I'm going to work with these two or three individuals on these topics. Now they might be psychological, they might be technical, tactical, whatever they are.

Then the next night I'm going to rotate to three other players. So there's lots of strategies you can put in place. One I'm using at the moment is just having a whiteboarded of recession and there'll be three individuals on the board who are working on one of their targets on the evening. They might peer review it amongst themselves, it might be a peer review on match day half time or full time, it might be me having a conversation one to one with them or it might just be them feeding back on how it's going.

So there's lots of things you can do there around actually putting those individual objectives in place and getting players just to reflect. I recently connected with a grassroots coach who told me that the first thing he did was have a preseason barbecue. So he got the mums and dads and the kids and the cancer of the Chinese session and just went to the local park where it was legal to be barbecues. And just got people talking and had a chat about brothers and sisters in school and what do you like and what did you do last season.

And he was basically a similar idea to what you're talking about so much learning so quickly about what sits around the player. When he started with the group it wasn't new and the kids knew each other and he knew the parents and he had a head start. I think it's also important perhaps if we could just dive into it but you're talking about having three or four kids to be focusing on in the session maybe on that whiteboard. That doesn't necessarily mean if I've interpreted this correctly.

That doesn't mean you're running a session with those three kids. You're still coaching the team but you're going to focus because we're working in an environment where it's one coach to 12 players. You're still running that practice that is for all but in that week you might be focusing on two or three. Is that what you're speaking about that?

Yeah absolutely. I think it's just it's not a case if you're taking the eye off of all of the other nine players are out there. You're still running your session. You're still working on whatever you need to work on or you're working to the curriculum within your club but you're just saying right for tonight I'm just going to be keeping an extra eye on these or I'm going to set these objectives and I just want you know you just sort of run with it.

Now it won't work every time. Some kids forget they might not see they're on the board you know they're human they're going to come in and miss things but I think some players really respond to it. So it's like when you're standing in front of the group doing a coaching intervention or making a point or having a debrief we can't sit there and expect that 12 out of 12 players are going to be sitting there hanging on everywhere that we say because we're the coach and we've got the tracks set on. They might be allowed out the back to and kick up so there might be another one staring staring at the sky because he's absolutely bored about what's coming from you but there may be three or four players who are really engaged and maybe they're benefiting from that communication.

So I guess it's just about different things with different players. Some may really thrive on the idea of one objective just to focus on within their training session. Others might actually read it and then forget about it and then when you review they go oh yeah it was good and you go oh well can you give me a bit more than that because I want to have a conversation I want to know that you're aware of it. Did this help you if it didn't how can it help you next time.

So yeah you're still doing your session with that's positional passing finishing whatever the topic is but you may just have an emphasis on that and that can also tie into a longer plan around let's say for the next 12 weeks we're going to work on each player's got their objectives and just for the next few weeks I'm just going to focus on one target with this player when their turn comes up. So yeah it's just finding that balance and giving you a little bit of I guess a little bit more focus and honing in on a few individuals so they can feel like they're getting that bit of attention and getting that work with you as well whilst you're working with the group. And then how would you select which individuals to work with so you talked about maybe the theme of the session or is it rotated on a curriculum I know you're a planner so you might have a surgery but how would you rotate so again going back to that dad kind of grassroots coach if he's got 12 players how would you rotate and how do you choose which two or three to focus on on a Tuesday night. So I generally just try and rotate through the group so there's in terms of the way I'm working at the moment what I have as a folder within that folder I've got everybody's individual plan and all the players have their individual plans in their kit bags as well so you know they should be able to access them it's probably something I should check more often because I do trust them but what I'll do is rotate through it might be that I'll work with one player for three sessions on the balance if it's particularly if it may be it's an issue that's prevalent let's say it's receiving skills and we're really trying to just get them lots of repetitions therefore they might be playing in a certain area but generally I'll try and rotate through and again an example would be perhaps a leadership challenge so you might see a player a leadership challenge at training and then give them the captaincy on the weekend to see if they can go out and apply some of those leadership skills within the game so again just try to continue that theme so very much just try to get through the group and balance it really week to week.

And then I suppose the the next layer of this is something that I've seen Ben Bartlett do very very well is where you end up giving 12 different constraints or 12 different challenges within your group rather than this is the practice and it's like an overarching umbrella and everybody you know has to score for one such finish for example what Ben tries to do is is affect every single individual in the practice now that is probably the utopia and it's very difficult to do but he will kind of give the defenders a constraint or a challenge about can you get out using two touches and then he'll give them a field as a challenge of can you every time you face forward can you try and pass forward and I suppose that that's where we're trying to get to so you might have your your spotlight onto three players with them from a coaching point if you're thinking about what does Dave need what does Steve need and can you continually kind of get those individual interventions or individual challenges for those guys is that is that where you see this kind of process heading? Yeah definitely and I think you've got to be aware once you understand what your players attributes are or maybe it's a perceived weakness that they're working on at that moment I think you can then within the group having that open conversation for me leads to a learner's mindset within the group so this isn't a case of having a secret conversation over here with little Johnny Santa Catchone we're going to work on your week foot and not telling one it'll be tonight Johnny's working on his week foot so I'm going to encourage him every time to finish on his week foot or release with his week foot so can we make sure that his team are giving him opportunities to do that and supporting him when he fails you know working with a player at the moment he's a very good dribbler and loves to dribble and drive and beat players and for me that player needs a lot of repetition of dribbling driving being encouraged so some nights I might say right every time you get the ball I want you to dribble and run and also to the players I've told this player to do that and if he loses it it's on me so don't worry about it I've asked him to do it so I think that transparency within the group is really important as well and then final question on this kind of subject is this something that you've modeled from a coaching point of view so if you have a shared with the players this is what I'm going to try and work on tonight as a coach and then either get their feedback or discuss when you got it right and when you got it wrong and kind of showing that bit of vulnerability I don't know if I've necessarily said tonight I'm going to try X and if I get it wrong this is what's going to happen but what I have done and a lot and I do a lot when I'm communicating with the players to say if I recognize that perhaps there's a breakdown in the practice I'll put my hand up and say okay I haven't explained this this is on me come in let's address it and then let's move on so I think you have to be open to getting it wrong in front of your players and again starting another PDP contributor Reed Mulp you know we talk about modeling vulnerability if coaches and adults can't do that in programs and on the grass then how a player is going to start building that trust and then open us to come up and say actually I don't know the answer here or I need you help with this so we've got to accept that as coaches we'll get it wrong and I certainly have open conversations with my colleague who we work with in front of the players we might say okay yeah lads we've got this one wrong we're just going to talk about it now we're going to address this and then suddenly understanding my click and the session starts to flow so you do have to be willing to get wrong in front of your group and again that's about removing your ego and not worrying you know I guess you know people who say the show must go on and performers get up there and make the stakes show us how to go on so if you make a mistake get over it and just just do what's best for your players and if you have to help them because of your lack of communication or perhaps the task you've designed doesn't really work and it's breaking down then you're just going to go yeah right we won't do this one again we'll move on that kind of brings the conversation full circle doesn't it's maybe in another environment the coach would blame the players that the practice was rubbish and not say you know I need to make the area bigger or do you know what we need another two neutral players or we need a bigger goal or whatever I think like you said that that's going to be moving that ego and helping the players learn and showing like I make mistakes too so it's okay when you make mistakes because I'm not going to hammer you for this I don't have to move on I've got the area size wrong right we're going to move on to part two of the show this is the question cube which I know you're excited about so we've got we've got 20 random questions in here so we're going to go one to five and hopefully make you sweat a little bit so let me get in there so question number one what are the considerations when you plan a session right so first of all you know if I'm going to walk here I have to say well which individuals am I going to affect and again if I sort of reflect on my time at full and this was an area the club does brilliantly and it's something that you know we were tasked with making sure that every time we planned every time we went out we were very clear whether it's game day or training that we were going to affect some individuals whether that's given them targets whether that's giving them some extra support whatever that was so which individuals am I looking to plan for I'd also like to think there's a theme running through the session so it's one of those things where if there's a topic how can I design sessions which naturally link so an example of that recently I can think of was I had a game that I wanted to finish with which was a kind of a combination play game which combined 1v1s and quick passing so my theory around that was what I'm going to spend the first 20 minutes doing 1v1s from different angles then we're going to work on some really quick passing receiving combination playing then we're going to bring it into a game so it was kind of three parts to the session and it was very clear with the players that okay tonight we're looking to end up here so we're going to work on this we're going to work on this and then we're going to splice them together with the aim of seeing some really good finishing and quick play in the final third so yeah which individuals what is my theme sometimes it might be okay with this went wrong on the weekend so we really need to put a little bit more energy into this so yeah and then it's a collaboration of course because I'm working with another coach as well so we'll collaborate on who's leading what if it's a plays a play for example it might be okay can you lead the defenders can you lead the attackers and one leads the session one works for the individual so there's sort of key considerations in terms of the plan yeah and that co-coaching piece is very interesting isn't it's a real skill to work with somebody and like said to affect individuals in possession out of possession one's managing one team one second that's a challenge I think will coach yourself question number two this one is actually quite hard how do you deal with difficult players this yeah straightaway I've got faces flashing up on my mind as the difficult players over the years look I think there's certain players that need certain things sometimes they don't need you sometimes they don't need to hear from you I think as coaches we can often think oh you know it's going wrong wrong over here for a little Pete and I've got to get in there and help Pete out because you know and he maybe doesn't like you that much some players won't like you some players some players won't like every coach they have and that's nothing personal it's just that not everybody you meet in life you're gonna get along with it so maybe maybe one player may respond to your assistant coach better than you so that's something to consider so where's the relationship stronger I think the next thing is to really understand what's going on and I think sometimes it's very easy when we're out on the grass we're worried about our session we're worried about getting ball rolling worried about getting getting on to a facility and out of a facility because there's teams before or after if you're in a shared environment that you know you can sort of think just about those sort of exes and o's and what's happening on the pitch but for me the next step is probably a conversation and again you've got to have the trust of the player and I guess some kind of relationship to start getting that player to open up so it may be you know just walking on to the pitch again it's not a quick process it might be okay well Monday night I'm just going to make a point of walking out onto the pitch and seeing how this player's going there's anything going on at home is anything going on at school how's he day been what have you been up to and just sort of sowing the seeds and then maybe the next session I could just be walking off the pitch would just have a quick chat how's tonight how did you how did you go I think you've got to sort of get players to warm to you and that takes trust and time so I think asking questions is a really good strategy there but also accepting where you've got relationships and where you can have influence and I'll never forget a session I did with a very talented young player who found me out and it's it's an example I've used a lot when talking about coaching in the I designed a session which was sort of a wave practice three team position where players had to press either in so multi-directional and this player was so all intelligent and also cheeky that he literally just stood still in an area in the middle of the park and gone well I'll let my three mates run around like he looks chickens and press because we're working on pressing what he's worked out is I can cover them do the minimal amount of work and be very efficient just pick up passes and intercept the ball and it was an individual where I still look at that gone brilliant like you've absolutely killed me here in terms of the session but this individual was so confident and and I get strong in the mind and technically very good as well then he's just solved the problem so I thought whilst it's revealed a floor in my session it's actually a real testament to the player and a nice little lesson for me as a coach as well and and this player didn't need me to find that solution so it's just an example where the session design didn't actually intend to get that outcome but it happened and lots of the other players got to work on pressing which was great but he sort of worked on screen so I think know your players ask questions and make sure you got that relationship it's really crucial it's another kind of park back to the ego as well isn't it so you talk to them about somebody ruin your session so that will hurt your ego somebody that your assistant coach might have a better relationship with you there so that will hurt your ego and that kind of talks back to what we were talking in the big idea that at times you have to park that to do what's best for the player or to get the best outcome for the player question number three oh so this is a question you get to ask all the time what are the characteristics of an effective coach well it's amazing how many times I've asked that question got so many good answers and as soon as you've said it they've all flooded out of my head um I think I think for me um communication skills I think so often I've observed sessions or you know and got it wrong myself as well where you can see that the the task or the picture hasn't quite clearly been articulated to the players and as a result things might break down or there could be stress on the players because they don't quite understand what's happening and then they lose the ball and suddenly we're thinking why has he done that so I think communication is absolutely critical in terms of getting a message across knowing how to intervene and when to intervene um knowing how to communicate with different individuals knowing how to communicate with the collective and knowing when you've spoken for too long as well so that ties into the second point which for me is self-awareness and again it's probably a little bit going back to the ego theme but if we're self aware we should understand that again we're going to get things wrong we're going to make mistakes we're going to be human we're in front of a group of people you know I remember as a 19 year old coach doing a demo on a crossing and finishing session putting my foot in a pothole and falling over in front of a group of 16 year old girls you know that doesn't get much more humiliating for a 19 year old coach at that stage of life does it so you know I guess being self aware knowing where you're sort of um your limits are and knowing when to speak when not to and then I guess the third one that pops in the mind at the moment is probably you know there's dozens of good answers to this is empathy you know putting yourself in the player's shoes because often we get so caught up with putting adult limbs on youth sport and we have to remember that these kids are here to play football or play whatever sport they're participating in they're not here to you know listen to you download every everybody knowledge that you've got in your head or put on a show or be the center of attention and I think the easiest way to sort of compare that is that when fans watch sport they get frustrated if the referee dominates because the referee's you know should be under the radar and just keeping the game going and if you're playing sport and the coach is dominating whether that's from the sideline vocally or whether that's you know just just like you're stealing the show a little bit then I think you've got to realize that this is their experience and having that empathy to go well this is their game it's their time you've had yours then I think that that's probably a third point there around around those key characteristics but there's so many that are crucial to being an effective coach I think it's interesting I think that you spoke about kind of soft skills or human skills communication empathy self awareness rather than X's and O's and tactics and so if we go back into the beginning of the conversation perhaps what you thought coaching was 15, 16, 17 years ago and what you think coaching is now are slightly different things I think that is kind of reflected in the answer definitely yeah I think it is an evolution in it like we all change and we all get better and again I think the older you get the more experience you get the more self-aware you become and the more sometimes you'll see things and go why is that happening again that's kind of something I've got a little bit of an obsession but a passion about at the moment it's just questioning things and I think the first question that we should all have in mind as adults in youth sport is this best for the children is this best for the player is this best for the athlete concerned because if it's not why we do it you know and there's you know whether it's you know I've again I'm quite passionate about the sort of narrative of performance performance narrative and sport science creep in into youth sport too young like why why are we doing that because you know we can do things like play we can do you know so many different things that are more important for the kids because that's what they want and that's what's best for them so yeah if it's good for them and we're putting them first then hopefully we're on the right track and that youth sport looking like adult sport and why is it it's probably another conversation for a further day you're gonna start me on a rant you're gonna start me on a rant don't do it question number four um which book would you recommend as a must read for coaches I think I might know the answer to this one already. I'm actually reading a non-football book at the moment called Identity Crisis by Ben Elton highly recommend that for anyone that's listening just in terms of a narrative of the world we live in um look the book that's been a big influence recently as you're leading to is Legacy read that a few years ago did a book review on the PDP about it more so because it's and yes got ties to the all blacks and obviously being in New Zealand are the all blacks crucial to our culture and our own national identity but within that there's so many great lessons around psychology leadership and just some of the I guess cultural reflections that come out of that so highly recommend the book legacy I just think it's one of those that if you are in a coaching leadership or influential position there's just so many good lessons and the way the book is written um there's a number of sort of mary proverbs in there and little takeaways and little nuggets that you can just yeah that just sort of resonates so for me it was a book that um it's been a real real positive influence and one I definitely recommend. Yeah and how you're not set up to be some sort of affiliate um salesman I know it's a tough enough it's got to come from okay uh last question let me get in there okay nice do you have a favorite practice can you describe it oh there's a few at the moment um one of them I've stolen from you I don't know what you call it but at the moment a small-sided game we're running a lot just to work on sort of the tight combination play quick football um is sort of the 4v4 or 5v5 small-sided game two goal boxes with bounces around the outside or on maybe one or two touch just for close range finishing and I think you know statistics will tell us that a lot of goals happen within the goal box or the majority of goals do um so I think you've got to work on that area I'm also a massive fan of positional games uh I sort of over the years I don't consider myself I know there's a lot of people out there who are real experts in the art of positional play and it's something that I am very keen to continue learning about but it's an area of the game that I have been looking at in the last few years and the more I do them whether it's 44 plus 3 or 4 or whether it's a bit smaller with 3v3 plus 3 I think the positional outcomes and the principles of the game that emerge from those practices is so crucial and most of all if we're talking about football it's a game of space it's a game of if you're in more space or if you're in space earlier than someone else perhaps and you're aware in terms of where you can be on the pitch to whether it's play forward or create then you're ahead of the game so straight away by being in good space you can start working on things like first touch and get things quicker whereas if you're always under pressure it's a lot harder to perhaps receive to play forward whereas you might get better at retaining the ball under pressure so within positional games the space emerges and it's tight and it's quick and it's rapid play but you can then also go and coach tactical principles so it could be you know again it's a small scale it could be full backs on the ball can he receive in a position further advanced than the defender who's inside and just received a play forward or center backs on the ball or center midfielders on the ball can they play forward passes and then what combinations and so you know if I was if I was running a program that would be a fundamental for me in terms of what we do on the grass every night so yeah between sort of combination of finishing games and positional games for sure at the moment and you've definitely spent too much time in Australia if you're calling it a goal box and I think the other kind of takeaway for coaches is that simple principle of play that in possession it's about creating exploring spaces and it's a different variations we'll have different orders and different lists of those five key principles but creating exploring space if you help the kids understand that then they're not going to go far wrong with the ball either that's right that's the game and I think sometimes we can get so caught up in tactics formation shapes you know this person plays here you've got to be here whereas in fact the answer is can you just be in space and a coach we used to work with I remember he always used to use the term and I've stolen I use all the time are you on a clear line or working with young players can can your team mate see your feet those are great principles it doesn't matter how old you are what level you're playing at if you are in space and your teammates can see your feet or you're on a clear line to receive the ball chances are you're halfway there to playing forward and get yourself in good position so yeah it's the game cool so well done that's the end of the question cube not too difficult managed to do that got to it yeah next question before we wrap up is is what's next for you what are you going to be working on next 12 months or any new projects or any new kind of areas of focus for you and your coaching yeah so at the moment it's been great in the last sort of nine months or a year or so working with under 20 players it's been really really great to be working with older players again and just you know there's been a lot that I've sort of learned in the environment at the moment and the coaches I'm working with as well so just hoping to continue doing as much coaching as possible so I'm on the grass you know four days a week at the moment and it's pretty busy but also playing a home project I mean we've got some great new initiatives coming up and the big focus in the next one is to continue to to better serve our members and to create more features and just continue to do that so between coaching and PDP that's pretty much where I am and it's a fortunate position to be in and I'm lucky to be able to coach as much as I can at the moment but yeah just spending time on the grass and working on continually trying to help coaches and support coaches within our community.

Fantastic and to continue that learning I guess before we wrap up where can people find you so where's best to get older Dave? So Todd is the best channel Dave Rydos 7 if you want to give us a follow on there and you know generally I'll be reposting a bit of PDP content or sharing articles of interest so that's the best place but obviously played development project website there's I think there's about 40 or 45 pieces of mine on the site now in terms of written content from the last few years and you can sort of see a few more of my ideas there and obviously the Q&A's we create as well generally gives people a feel for how we see the game and youth development and of course coaching in general so those are the best channels. Fantastic so Dave just want to thank you for your time today it's been good but interesting for my point if you to be beside rather than that side so yeah thanks for your time today. Real pleasure mate it's yeah really enjoyed it I think you're doing a great job on this podcast and hopefully all the listeners are enjoying it so thanks mate.

Thanks for joining us on the Playa Development Project Podcast. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram at PlayaDB or find us on Facebook. Don't forget to head over to Playa Development Project.com where you can sign up for our progress in coaching community and gain access to our wide variety of resources to help you in your coaching.