FOOTY POST COVID-19 PART 3 (FREE CONTENT)

The 3rd and final part of what ended up being a monster peice of writing!

BUILD CONFIDENCE EARLY WITHIN EACH PLAYERS BANDWIDTH

I'm not sure if anyone has heard of bio-banding but it refers to grouping juniors into levels based on ability and/or size rather then simply age.

Big kids play with the big kids in rugby, skilled kids play with the skilled kids in soccer and so on.

This means that ALL kids are playing against or with kids at their own level and hopefully each can develop at the pace they want to, rather then too slow or too fast, both of which can be the cause of early sport drop out.

I would suggest trying this with your playing groups because getting back to the fitness point above, it's not about improvement here, it's about getting players back to their normal in-season skill level.

The 1-drill-fits all mantra of local/amateur footy has been needing to go for a long time and this is your chance.

This is something I would try and do:

1. Group players into top end senior, low end senior, top end reserve and low end reserve or whatever age group/s you have.
2. Run the same drill for each group where obviously skill level and speed will increase from the lowest group to the highest group - the drill might also increase in complexity from level to level too.
3. At anytime, players from 1 group can go to the next group up to "try their hand" and if they feel comfortable and want to stay there, then they can.

This provides a no-stress environment for players to push themselves to new levels at their own pace while training all players at something way closer to their correct level then all players performing the same drill.

Over time most players will hopefully move up a group and then it might work better to move to 3 groups such as top end senior, bottom end senior/top end reserves and bottom end reserves.

This might be the best idea I've ever had to be totally honest and is totally doable at any football club - raise the floor to raise the ceiling.

ALTERNATIVE TRAINING SCHEDULE

Some players might still feel a bit iffy about being out so much, somemight still have kids at home from school, some might be still looking after relatives etc so maybe training 1/week when games start is your best option.

Sure I'm one of the oldest players going around but footy really needs an extra day in the week for mine so we can play/train/train/play 3 days apart - that would be perfect from a play, recover, train point of view but alas I don't think I have the pull to change that.

For this season at least I could see a sole Wednesday night training as an extremely viable option.

Players will be coming off limited preperation and games will be bloody hard, especially the first 2 - 3, without any practice games beforehand, froma loading/recovery point of view.

On top of that it'll be tough, contested footy with plenty of contact straight up because lack of game practice, skill work and fitness will mean slower and less skilled ball/player movement which increases player loading by a huge margin compared to dryer, less contact games, so again extra recovery will be needed.

By having players come to Tuesday training still sorry and sore from the weekend will only put players at risk of injury, putting at risk every other point I've made here under the initial and most important one - player availability.

It will also lessen the required committment in this tough time which may get players more on-side with playing each week then if a 2 x training and 1 x game committment is required.

Yes, we've always done that but this a different time and to think people won't start to think differently now compared to just 6 weeks ago is incredibly niave.

It may not end up being an issue but if it is you better be prepared and organised to be able to roll with it at a moment's notice.

Another lesson - "Control What You Can Control", and that's non-contact injuries.

TRAINING IN SMALL GROUPS

It looks that if and when we do go back we could potentially be limited to smaller training groups which feeds my bio-banding point above a little bit.

What you'll need then are drills specifically designed for smaller numbers, meaning you're gonna need a helleva lot more drills, different drills than you have right now.

As mentioned in part 1, the most efficient way to do this is through small sided games but they still need to have a purpose and progression.

You can't slap a 3v2 handball together on it's own and expect it to transfer to games.

Yet another lesson - "Learn to Solve the Same Problem as Many Different Ways as Possible or a Lot of Different Problems".

Focus on 1 at a time though.

I'll try to put something together to use for this very soon.

PUT TRAINING BEFORE TRAINING + REVIEW EACH SESSION ON YOUR SOCIALS (VISION IF POSSIBLE)

As part of the Game Model it's a great idea to:

• Put training up in your private socials prior to the session so players have an idea of what they'll be doing, the focus of the session and can therefore think about it prior to the session
• Review training sessions and games with vision if possible for individual players and/or the team

Again this might be a little time consuming but with limited training time you've got to find other avenues for teaching and learning through vision is extremely underrated in local/amateur football.

Most senior leagues now video their games and make them available to the clubs so this can easily be carried out now.

You might even find some vision from last year to reiterate what you'll teach going forward to get a jump on things.

PLAYER ENGAGAMENT

I mentioned player engagement above but here are some more idea's to get as many players involved as you can:

• Joke of the Week at training, filmed then put up on your socials
• Have different players do the warm up, warm down or set a challenge for everyone to try (goal fromthe boundary etc)
• Edit the top 5 plays from last week's game
• Edit the bottom 3 plays from last week's games (choose your targets wisely though)
• Tic Tok has huge engagment at the moment so maybe steal some idea's from that such as short dances, acting out a movie scene etc and pull players out of a hat to do it each week either live or recorded.
• My club did a simple trivia night last night with 40 attendees

(SENIOR) COACH THE PARENTS

At junior levels the standard of coaching will often dictate how far players develop and it's a thankless job most of the time and far harder then coaching adults/teens as attention spans and personal motivations can vary greatly from player to player.

Another time consuming but extemely worthwhile endeavour is to have your senior team coaches (mens and women's) train up your helper parents to become "coaches" too.

It might be as simple as the club putting together some workshops on teaching basic skills of footy (kicking, handballing etc) to parent helpers (mum's and dad's) simply so everyone is delivering the same message all the time.

So there it all is.

I've had most of this stuff on my mind quite sometime but couldn't get it out, or quite know the best way/time to get it out but here it is so let me know whatever feedback and/or questions you have on any of it.