One of the things that amazes me this year, is the amount of organisation and work in FFT rep coaching.

It seems much greater than when I did a rep team a few years ago, which was a junior region. There really is quite a lot of work, even with an excellent manager.

With training ground sessions, I usually arrive 60 minutes to 40 minutes early to set out cones.

I usually spend about 60 - 90 minutes planning sessions the previous night, relating to a weakness identified in a game. A four stage theme should be current throughout sessions, with an evaluation at the end.

We also need to organise constant and regular practice games, as the team is not in a regular roster. It is the first time a team I've coached has more than one session per week.

The team has had resounding success on the pitch, to the point of us needing some losses to prevent over-confidence for the state championships in a few weeks.

The good match performances are very satisfying. To see a game playing possession football out from the back in a 1-4-3-3, diagonal passing, and holding the midfield triangle well, is the culmination of some hard work and thorough planning.

Against the Skilleroos the other night, the team must have made over 20 successive passes in one stanza of the game. Apart from the first goal, scored from a mistake by the Skilleroos, tour other goals were all well-constructed. The team has beaten the Skilleroos by big margins in practice games.

Nevertheless, the score does not reflect that the Skilleroos played some excellent football and should have scored more goals against us. From the first games, the Skilleroos really dominated us in 1v1 duels, which we've worked on in the last weeks on the training ground.

However, I've run some poor training ground sessions in the last week, with players lacking focus and intensity. I'm partly at fault. A couple of hidings from older teams should fix that.:) We play three games this week. Nice to have less work , as games require a lot less preparation.:)








Edited by Decentric: 23/4/2013 12:12:03 AM