Mike Cockerill said last night on Fox Sports that heading was not in the FFA NC.

Rudan commented on this, not elucidating that as I understand it, it is part of Striking The Ball. This is one of the four Core Skills, along with First Touch , Running With The Ball, 1v1 Attacking and Defensive skills in the FFA NC.

Having said this, I asked a trained FFA youth coach to pass on what he had learnt from a state Skills Acquisition Program coach after his son had been in it for a whole year. He said nothing was ever done on heading and he attended every session!

I rate this SAP trainer, and so do many others, as an outstanding coach, in almost every other facet of the game. He is a relatively self-deprecating sort of guy, but he could end up coaching national teams in the future.

Many of the technical deficiencies we observe against J, K and C League teams are being redressed in his coaching sessions - First Touch under pressure, with inside and outside of both feet, passing with the inside and outside of both feet in confined space and time, forcing players to become two footed and both sided, and coaching dribbling and ball carrying with the head up. Verbeek said East Asian players are far better technicians than in Oz in 2009.

I know the women's NTC coach does a lot of work on heading, because of the long balls they have to counter from club teams.

I was looking for a heading activity for circuit sessions and the best advice was from Cardiff on 442. He recommended heading tennis. This is one activity we used to do in the old long ball days when I played at youth level, but it is good.

What Cockerill needs to realise is, that essentially the state league players he is so keen to advocate as good enough for A League teams, have often had insufficient technical quality coaching to play the technical football FFA wants to see in Oz.

He probably knows a lot more about football than most of the journos in Oz, but he should do some FFA coaching courses to gain some more insight.

Edited by Decentric: 27/2/2014 08:59:48 AM

Juggling with the head is good not perfect.Not every player will be good in the air but he can have other great abilities ie zidan

Personally i would prefer players have ability with both feet.
I know a player who spent a lot of his time perfecting both feet then went to Europe to play, players in Europe are trained to identify their opponents strong side and show him his week side. Guess what , he had them totally fxxxed.
PS They look for your dribbling foot and claim that as your dominant one.

Could be that 'Del Boy' aka Kelly Cross still hankers after the land of his birth.
Consider this:
English FA 'future game' has no heading
English FA introduce youth advanced licenses

So imagine a world where by Del boy is TD , what would he do,
recycle olde English FA initiatives for one.

Rondos is used by all Spanish coaches at every training session.The main differences is they make the outside circle smaller than we do and they have a constant turn over of the middle player. Sometimes with larger numbers they make the outside players hold hands and move the circle around.The most important thing is the players don't just touch with one foot pass with the other they step over, flick, round the ball around the leg, anything to improve their skills and they laugh a lot.

From memory the national curriculum doesnt want 'developing' kids heading the ball too often and thus it doesnt cover heading. There are plenty of simple heading exercises you can run as players get older to work on heading technique. We need to remember though that attacking and defensive heading have very different techniques

Attacking and defending heading is different.

I'm taking your word for it, but I think it is a grave mistake by FFA to take a reductionist view in heading. One of the NTC coaches I know does it a lot on the training track to counter the long balls launched by other teams.