Clubs will soon start the annual process of appointing volunteer coaches for u6 and u7 players. These coaches often have no prior coaching and/or football experience.

In our club we try and offer as much support and training as possible however we can't be there for every training session. What the new coaches really need is a readymade season coaching session plan, ideally on DVD, which is designed for young children.

S2S is good but is not as instantly accessible as a DVD. (There are also some odd quirks with S2S's u6 and u7 season plans including drills of 25 mins duration, goalkeeping drills - even they don't use goalies - and S2S does not suggest finishing coaching sessions with mini games.)

The FFA have been promising a DVD for 2 years now but it doesn't seem any closer to production.

Other companies offer products for u6 and u7s which focus on drills that are repetitive and often don't even involve a ball.

So, do you know of any DVDs or even books which have a readymade season plan for u6s and u7s?

http://www.footy4kids.co.uk/soccer_games_and_drills_by_age_goup.htm

Pick some excercises, print them up laminate them and tell your volunteer coaches this is what needs to be done this week, next week give them a slightly different one etc. will take you 2hours.

Thanks. I am really after something that can be used in every club. At the moment, all clubs are reinventing the wheel, coming up with their own solutions to the question of how to coach the youngest players. Milo cricket - and I think Auskick - provide a standard set of coaching drills for their youngest players. This allows novice coaches to get on with coaching whilst they learn some drills and how to deal with a group of young children. (Obviously coaches should also take the FFA's grassroots then junior courses). For what it's worth here's a link to the resources my club offers to its novice coaches. (You'll recognise many of the drills from the footyforkids emails). It's rudimentary and would really benefit from videos of the skill related games: http://burwoodfc.com.au/courses.asp

Looking at your website you guys are on the right track. Maybe4 your asking for more than what you actually need.

Try this if you really insist;

http://www.reedswainsoccer.com/servlet/the-368/soccer-coaching-dvd-football/Detail


And actually I agree with you, with all the coaching certification training, the Curriculum, the National Development plan.

Some simple DVD presentations would have been invaluable and put ervey ones mind at ease as to "are we doing it right?" which is a common theme amongst many coaches.

Edited by Arthur: 28/12/2010 07:58:32 PM

That website link was very useful. There's a few interesting books and DVDs for the 5-7s. All the FFA need to do is endorse some existing products or produce their own and we'd all know exactly where we stand. I'm not so concerned for clubs where there are experienced coaches who are turning their minds to the problem. But what about the clubs - and more importantly players - where no-one is offering support to the new coaches. The FFA courses are not enough to support inexperienced coaches at these clubs. They need a readymade product.

At our club we offer a one-off inhouse coach training session pre-season, website resources and, hopefully, this year we'll offer mentoring by asking experienced coaches to be part of a pool of coaches who can run a session with newer coaches. (We'll need to talk to the mentors to remind them that the new coaches are dealing with 5 year olds so the training needs to be pitched at the correct level). For all the great work the FFA has done with updating and standardising its training courses the reality is that we struggle to get our coaches on the FFA's courses. Our local association offers few grassroots courses and, incredibly, no junior courses at all until after the season has ended! My intention is to get a few of those DVDs/books from that website and, if they seem okay, buy a load of them to give out to our new coaches. The cost will be a fraction of what we spend on participation trophies to our players each year.