Football NSW’s North Zone Advanced Coaching Expo saw 75 coaches soak up an opportunity to professionally develop themselves ahead of the 2020 season.
The night kicked off with ACPE Lecturer Gareth Long discussing Sports Australia’s Physical Literacy Framework, which is centred on building the skills, knowledge and behaviours to help us live active lives. He discussed the importance of developing people across Physical, Psychological, Social and Cognitive domains to ensure they have the ability, confidence and desire to be physically active and participate in sport.
The action then moved out onto the pitch, where three ‘breakout’ practical sessions took place. Football NSW Coach Development Manager Chris Adams led a practical session with youth players which demonstrated the importance of coaching the individual within a team context, providing players with the necessary football detail to develop them as an individuals within the collective team. Furthermore, coaches witnessed how utilising rules/constraints within practices can help bring out the desired player behaviours within a practice.
Gareth Long brought the Physical Literacy Framework to life, delivering three different SAP football practices that incorporated elements of the framework – object manipulation, collaboration and strategy & planning. This gave coaches insight into how to develop players’ Physical, Social and Cognitive skills within football sessions and also how to further engage players by providing them with ownership of training practices.
Goalkeeper coaches were treated with FNSW Goalkeeper Coach Liam Dedini taking them through various game-realistic practices. These practices aimed to develop technical goalkeeper skills in conjunction with positional understanding and decision making ability to ensure goalkeepers are developed holistically through utilising engaging practices.
The night was brought to a close by Chris Adams taking coaches through a theory session focused on domains of understanding in relation to coaching and ‘putting the players first’ when it comes to our approach in football.
“The Advanced Coaching Expo was a valuable night with positive and memorable messages on coaching and player development,” commented NSFA Community Football Manager Nick Marr.
“This is our first time hosting an event of this kind and it is clear from the number of coaches that attended we have a collective of coaches that are committed to self-development and improving their coaching for the benefit of players.
“The appetite is evidently there for these types of events and we look forward to working closely with Football NSW to offer our coaches more of these special opportunities.”
“Thank you to Chris, Gareth and Liam for sharing their wealth of knowledge with us, I am confident all coaches in attendance took something away to implement in their coaching journey this season.”
NSFA would like to thank players from Northern Tigers FC Girls SAP and Under 16 Boys Youth for their participation in the practical sessions on the night.