Apart from NPL level , there are many players playing from age 19 onwards, who feel like they train for outdoor football twice a week, but learn little from their coaches about improving their game.

That is:

1. Technical aspects of play

First touch
Running With The Ball
Striking The Ball
1v1 Defensive and Attacking Skills


2. Game Sense


3. Communication



They know in terms of conditioning, they have to be fit to play football, but are not that clear how, and in what areas they need to improve as set out by their coaches.

Hence, training becomes a chore.



Those people reading this who've continued to play football as an adult, what are /have been your experiences as adult footballers in terms of developing as footballers?

Sadly, this lack of learning has extended to players who've won a VPL title in the past.










Edited by Decentric: 28/4/2015 05:17:55 PM

Not a bad question Decentric.

I'll throw up some garb in my amateur kind of way.
Am still playing in the old er leagues, ex Prem 1 in my youth days, armchair expert j/k and currently have 2nd son playing U15 RYL.
I think we need to break this into 2 groups - Club and Rep levels.
Club, I would pigeon Div 1 for starters.
A mix with natural talent - some the typical good sound work horse.
Normally coached by a ex Club Rep player - or devotee non player.
Training time 1 to 1.5hrs x 1 a wk maybe 2.
Time is spent more so on fitness first 30mins, some ball work mixed into it, dribbling to staggered cones and back for eg.
Then some small sided games - backs/keeper vs halves/forwards.
Keeper taken aside for some practice with a subbie usually - some discussion with rest of team over last weeks game and onto coming game. Nothing technical enough more so to do with marking out key opponents.
Some shooting practice followed by a half pitch game, at times the fellow Div 2 team training as well or other.

At this level not much if any is spent on 1v1 Defensive and Attacking Skills imo.
Communication is only that that if their is some vocal players in the squad makes it a positive for the team as we know it, squads without a vocal player or 3 are lacking big time in that case and no coach is going to be able to correct this.

Game Sense - again I don't think its talked about enough.

My own youth experiences, when I consider the above I feel lucky that during my time management/coachs I had had the passion/knowledge of the game, taught us what we needed, skills,tackling,postion,reading the game followed by fitness.

Watching from the sidelines my U15 NYL, this again would vary by club resources but where he is currently.
The coach is early 20's, knowledgeable, covers everything in his 2 x 1.5 runs but not comprehensive enough.
Doesn't work them enough with the ball imo.
Also whilst they are doing x drill half the team is waiting doing nothing waiting their turn.
Mind you their results are pretty handy to date but just some of my observations.

I find this question too generalized, when I feel a large amount of it comes down to the individual coach. Some will do drills/formations/etc straight out of the text book, some will ignore it completely.

For the most part, I find at a senior level you'll rarely find a coach work on individual attributes like your number 1. For the most part, the coach will assess your positives and negatives, and harness/hide them, in his formation/system. And he will aid you to do so, but leave the individual improvement stuff up to you.

So have your coaches delineated areas that you to improve in technique?

Have they also delineated your strengths - individually/as part of a collective unit?

I'm interested about your comment as to them hiding players'weaknesses. I like to provide feedback where they need to improve and how they can do it.

Just replying from your thread on AF.

No longer play owing to a long term back injury and also family and work commitments. Have played at various levels but highest I played was in 2009 for Capital football premier league which is now the npl.

Was lucky enough to play with Tom Rogic and also Luke Pilkington who won the fox sports football superstar show that year. Played with a lot of former Cosmos juniors and also played against some other ghosts of the nsl era like Daniel Aliffi (remember him?!).

Learnt a huge amount going from amateur to semi-pro level mainly around game tactics and positioning.

Nowadays, we are supposed to do all training with the ball at all levels, other than HAL.

If it is is not with the ball, it is supposed to be game related.

So you've played pretty recently?

Did you always acquire new technical knowledge from your coaching?




Edited by Decentric: 29/4/2015 03:55:08 PM

Agree with a lot of M.L.'s comments in regards to my experience in my local comp. The senior coaches pretty much follow that forumla to a tee. Our league coach makes the players run laps for about half the session during pre-season. He replaced an ex-NPL player/coach who was getting trained in FFA Accreditation ... but that coach was too outspoken and upset the other coaches, who continued to do the "norm".

I think the FFA's National Curriculum is a great resource, and I am currently running through it for my u11's team. Bit hard though as it recommends two nights a week for training, but the parents only wanted one. I also found a great resource by FIFA on a 11+ warm up routine (apparently scientifically designed for football players). I've altered it slightly to incorporate a ball though.

The problem is that although the NC is a great resource not everyone uses it, or knows how to use it. In WA there are also local coaching clinics run nearly every month for junior coaches to improve their skills ... I unfortunately haven't been able to make the two this season so far, but from my impression they don't get a lot of attendees.

The level I played at in 2009 was a huge jump and so the learning curve was steep, but that was when "I got it" and understood positioning, playing out from the back, changing tempo, 3rd man runs and movement as well as importantly defensive positioning and "tucking in" as a left back. Also, noticed that playing and even training at a high level improves your touches so much so that when you step down everything seems so slow and you seem to have so much space.

Coaches didn't really teach technique that much then as I was in my mid 20s then. Wht I have noticed is how much better our young players re now compared to when I went through. They are all Soooooo much better.

This is really good.

However, a lot of coaches don' t like changing their practices, hence low attendances.

Our state FFA coaches get out and about to assist coaches on the training track. It is making a difference.

Other coaches than Ken Morton have teams playing through the midfield and have improved against Victorian and NSW NPL teams.




Edited by Decentric: 29/4/2015 04:06:59 PM

Agree the young players coming through now are technically a lot better. I train with kids almost 20 years my junior, and their skills are amazing.

I still find that they still lack a lot of tactical awareness (especially in regards to defensive positioning), but are a lot better in providing options in attack, and presenting an easy pass ... keeping possession and the short passing game is miles ahead of what I learned growing up.

It's organised through Football West, and they've even set up award recognitions for different levels too, think it is called "Strike It" or something like that. I do agree though that many coaches think "they know best" (even at my local level). Or just do what they did when they were young.

This is a massive problem.

Others like myself, including the guy who won a VPL title, are so horrified as to how we were coached 40 odd years ago, we enjoy seeing the modern improvements.

I learnt more about actually playing football from fellow players rather than coaches.

To me, coaches were only good for providing fitness excercises.

FWIW,
The local club that I coach at has an adacemy who play through the club. That academy runs training for coaches on a weekly basis, which can provide some handy stuff. Most of my coaching through comes from 2 of my old coaches who I loved playing under and learned everything from. If I'm ever stuck for ideas I scroll through Performance or Google some ideas to respond to weaknesses from the match on the weekend.

Pv ofcourse its generalised but im sure some commonality comes out from posts as proven.
Its so varied its ridiculous and thats the big problem at hand.
Many clubs are still behind the times and a small % are what the ffa are trying to implement.
All depends what type of club your with but imo each state governing body duties should be to get out there more and visit clubs spreading the word more.
Their websites are not used enough im sure.

Hey Decentric , thank me getting your thread going lol

#-o

Edited by Decentric: 29/4/2015 07:21:45 PM

Terrible scenario, similar to the bloke I know who won a VPL title at senior level .

The academy from your club is doing a good service.

I thought you still played?

Good to hear you had coaches who you kept learning from.

I play in a senior team with good mates and coach U16s at the club I spent 14 years at as player. I used to coach a much younger team, who've now become a very good little side.

When i played way back when i was a junior i had to stop playing due to injury.
But I found the coaches i've had hardly taught me anything tactically it was fitness and the playing style was just kick and rush and thats at state league level, it was outdated football.

Obviously things have changed since then and now where i assist coaching kids we use the FFA NC and other coaching resources its all based on teaching technique, thats with 7 and 8 year olds.

I kind of wished i went through the new technical reforms now, the current kids are lucky these days. :(

I coached my senior div 12 team to no success. It was just a bunch of mates and no one else wanted the job. It was an absolute shit fight to get 12 blokes who didn't give a fuck to learn anything. I did a few courses to try and improve my skills but it's hard when half your team is either stoned or throwing up mid game from the night before. We didn't make the finals once in 5 years. I was a bit reactive as a coach, I tried to help individuals learn from their mistakes and praise them when they did something good in roughly equal measure. We did improve a bit, first season we were losing every game by 5-10 and by the end we averaged 3 goals a game but unfortunately we still conceded 4-5.

I took half of this team to indoor and we killed it. We climbed from 4th division to 1st in 4 years and made the GF 4 times in a row with the same group of shit cunts. We regularly beat guys that played rep for Mounties and Blacktown. I don't think I taught people too much but I tried my best to lead by example, in saying that my strength was probably positioning my team in order to get the best passing lanes. Everyone had a defined role, either a position on the field, someone to shutdown the best opponent and someone to sniff out the weakest.

We learned much faster in the smaller format wih more touches on the ball. I'd say we learned a lot from playing better quality opposition than in outdoor and also the smaller field suited the fat cunts on my team to a tee. Communication was much easier and we were much more aware of where everyone was around us.

I dunno if that answers your broad ass question but I hope it helped.

I play amateur seniors in Bendigo and do junior club and rep squad coaching here. The biggest problem I've seen in my area is a lack of football interest and knowledge. I've had coaches and team mates who knew more about AFL than they did soccer. These people can only play and coachthe game at its simplest form. Running, kicking, tackling and 'going hard'. Then there are the coaches who've done the courses but don't actually understand the game. These coaches will have their teams perform complex, arcane drills but they don't seem to understand that the drills are meant to teach something. A lot of the coaches in my area see drills as just something to do, not something that is meant to be improving a certain aspect of performance. This is where you can see a good coach. Do you do drills for the sake of doing drills? Or do you do drills because your team needs to work on something in particular and your coach gives you feedback.

When I have coached the Bendigo rep squads or bright new players into my club team from other clubs, I noticed that none of them actually knew why certain drills existed. I would say, 'this drill should work on positioning your body to receive abd play a pass on another angle.' They had usually done the drill but they had never known why or been told to change how they did it. Same with piggy in the middle. A lot of players or teams just do this drill. If you don't naturally get the game the coach should tell you, 'try not to do a controlling touch that takes you back the way the ball has come. Look laterally for a pass. Set yourself up before the ball arrives. Etc.' The improvements in the kids come straight away when you explain these things. It's often instant.

Unfortunately, understanding the game and the reason for drills is a slow process. It doesn't come in a weekend course. Coaches need to be fans of the game.

Players need to believe they still have things to learn too. If they don't then any effort to coach them is a waste of time.

Agree with Langan, as a coach, I can easily pick the players who are actually fans of the game and those who are just there for the excercise. Nothing wrong with that in itself, but the kids who legitimately love football are far more enjoyable to coach.

This scenario wasn't considered terrible at the time.... it only seems terrible from your 2015 perspective.

Young players don't know how lucky they are today with the coaching networks that are availabel now.

It was the same scenario with me.

I'm not sure that I learnt a lot from other players like you did though, but just enhanced knowledge through playing football.

If I had had the knowledge I have now, I would never have stopped playing if coaches were always feeding back where I needed to improve. I would have worked on constant exercises I needed to do. Agree that current payers are lucky. In my day the players were always blamed for not getting stuck in enough if we lost. We thought it was always our fault and that the coach had nothing to do with us losing.

Instead I pursued karate, where there was constant feedback and explicit instruction in technique. From doing it, it has assisted my football coaching. They break down technique into so many component parts in karate.



Edited by Decentric: 30/4/2015 09:31:54 AM

What a terrific read this post is.=d>

You've done some hard, thankless work.=d>

Older players need to understand why they need to pursue something. Older players need to be shown what the Tasks and Objectives for coaching sessions are.

It can be hard motivating older players, but I've found senior females very receptive, even if not playing at a high level.

Actually I can send you three versions of Piggy In The Middle, or rondos as the Spanish call them, that players can see some structure for.

The genesis for this thread, is that FFA are concerned that if players don't receive similar quality coaching, to what they receive in rep programs, with some well trained coaches. After they leave the programs, they often drop out of football because they can see little intrinsic benefit from their weekly coaching at club level.

I've found it a challenge to coach players in lower ranked rep programs after they've been axed from top FFA coaching programs. I've had to try and fill the shoes of excellent coaches, which is a challenge. Being an old codger doesn't help either, particularly to teenagers.

Conversely, many players turn up for coaching for extrinsic reasons. Because they have to to gain a position in a team, not because they are developing as a player from week to week, right up to the end of their senior playing career.

I know many senior NPL players who have dropped down a few divisions to play social football with their mates, or only play futsal and indoor football, which is less formal.

New Signing said


Its a catch 22 situation, when i done my license there were people who passed that course who were clearly pathetic and will never be capable of coaching any form of performance. Too dedicated to the text book to think for themselves. In saying that i am currently being coached by a bloke who played premier league in brisbane, sydney, wollongong and canberra and he is really really ordinary. Some of the things i have seen from him on the training pitch and tactically have lead to me just putting my head down and not saying a word as i dont want to undermine his authority. As a result if he is going to commit himself to coaching next season i will have no choice but to at least send him to do his senior cert

What this tells you is that i believe the contemporary coaching is very very usefull however experience as a player at a reasonable level is almost as important to understand the players and the game scenario.

The only credentials i have to back up my opinion are: C class qualified and about 15 years senior experience in premier and state leagues



I've cut and pasted this post from the other section.




Edited by Decentric: 30/4/2015 09:38:40 AM

Another great read.=d>

This is what I'm seeing off forum, that many players are retiring from outdoor and playing Small Sided football in indoor /outdoor settings and futsal.

Players receive more touches, more involvement, less tactics, less formality and there is scope for a lot of mixed gender teams. All in all, this can equate to more enjoyment. Some elite female players are deriving great enjoyment from challenging themselves against more athletic male players in mixed comps.

This is a topic for another thread as FFA coaches differ diametrically on the intrinsic value of futsal as a tool for improving outdoor football performance. There is a level of tension between those for and against.





Edited by Decentric: 30/4/2015 10:03:58 AM