I've been appointed a head coach of a senior women's team here in Melbourne and I simply cannot wait to get stuck into it!
It's a re-booted women's team that disbanded after Covid so we're essentially a start-up team as the club structure and personnel has completely changed during that time period.
It is also a club that I have had no prior affiliation with prior to this appointment.
After being officially appointed in mid-to late November it was time to get to work.
I've always got training/game day coaching stuff ready to go but with zero players that mattered very little so the focus went directly to recruitment, contacting as many local players from around our club as possible as well as taking all new player inquiries.
There 3 divisions to the women's league we're in but we;re hoping to make the jump directly to division 2 via the grading games to start the season as we feel that's a far more sustainable option for the women's program going forward.
Currently we have anywhere from 15 - 30 players as we're finding where men already know if and where they're playing for season 2025, it is not the case for women but we're hoping for more certainty in the coming weeks as we start training and gather some on-field momentum.
There are 3 divisions to the women's section of the league we play in but we're hoping to make the jump directly to division 2 via the grading games to start the season as we feel that's a far more sustainable option for the women's program going forward.
We'll definitely have a team that's for sure but at the moment we feel we need 3 - 4 more top-tier players to achieve the goal of reaching division 2 this season goal but it's not the end of the world if we don't reach it.
Women tend to have a greater social ties to their current clubs then men which is a bit of a barrier for us as we don't have a current program in place but we'll work around as best as we can and cultivate our own culture to create those string social ties with the players we currently have and the new one's yet to jump on board.
The club, and in particular the President and Committee have been excellent so far, providing everything I've needed so far and are definitely altering the culture of the club for the better, already attracting 2 ex-AFL players and multiple high quality local football recruits well-known across Melbourne and the women's program is another cog in the engine to be a relevant football club again.
So now with training schedules for next weekend and us being a touch behind everyone else who trained pre-Xmas and are already an established team, last week and this week has been fully focused back to the on'field side of things.
This is always an ongoing with me as I research, learn and update my procedures/philosophy but now it needs to be all consolidated and streamlined to it's absolute maximum so it's fit for the players to read, process, understand and then implement and this is probably the toughest part of coaching.
I have a framework that I'm currently working through that will detail everything I'll focus on, what that will look like and the timeline for each of those focuses.
That part will malleable as I can't really set in-stone a game model without knowing my players action capabilities, which was the focus of our single pre-Xmas session and the first couple of sessions starting this year.
I've created training activities that are game-based but require a heavy dose of the specific technical skill/s I'm assessing such as:
- Kicking (long and short)
- Handballing (in congestion)
- Marking (unopposed)
- Reading the Play (defense-bias)
- Contest (ball hunting/ground balls)
As all activities are games-based I can also assess decision-making during game simulation,not relying on cone-to-cone unopposed planned technique rehearsal abilities to all of a sudden carry over into live opposed unplanned skill execution during games.
Once individual and collective action capabilities have been assessed at their current level then I can pitch them against my preferred game model and then questions that need to be answered are:
Will they match up?
If they don't match up, are they close enough to start work right away on specific aspects of the game model?
If they are well off what is needed for my preferred game model, do I think that we can improve them to a standard that would allow my current preferred game model to be used?
If not, then do I change the game model to fit my players capabilities?
A lot of times local coaches have a game plan and that's it, regardless of who they're working with, or they find out way too late that it can't work and than have to try and change on the fly which is hard to do and simply confusing for the players.
All that being said a lot of my game model is structure based and ensuring that everyone has and knows their role/s away from the ball,which is 99% of footy and therefore the area that yields the highest and easiest amount of improvement.
I should have this framework all filled out in the next week or 2 and then I can go to work on delivering the game model to the players which needs to be carried in a way that is simple for them to understand, not too complex for them to process, designing training activities that constrain-to-afford those specific game actions/interactions and allows a high degree of success in the process.
I will use the many teaching and learning techniques I've researched in the past such as challenge point, the use of constraints, scoring systems to incentivise the actions we want to practice and get repetition without repetition in and being highly aware of cognitive load at all times.
This is all in a quest to be ultra-efficient with each and every second we have together and also to maximise engagement, enjoyment, motivation and thus, fun!
So that's where I'm up to so far - plenty of work to do and not enough time to do it in (always the case!) but we'll give it a crack anyway.
Let me know how your own coaching process is developing for season 2025.
