Patrick Morrison: Coach the coaches

On Sunday, I completed a ‘coach the coaches’ session at the Bredagh club in East Belfast. It was a very well received coaching session with a total of 15 coaches, both goalkeeping and non-goalkeeping in their make-up, as well as nine underage goalkeepers aged between 14 and 18 years old.

Planning the session on Saturday evening, I meticulously designed the structure of the session looking to broaden the coach’s understanding of the goalkeeping position and how best to improve their custodians from a goalkeeping perspective.

Once completed, while I was running my eye over the plan for any mistakes or omissions, I had a thought come over me that made me scrap what I had planned and start again.

Looking over the session again made me realise that the session was completely geared towards the goalkeeping coaches only, and there was absolutely nothing in the session for the non-goalkeeping coach whatsoever. The session I had planned was the goalkeeping coach’s dream session to learn from but the session was going to lose the interest of the non-goalkeeping coaches after the very first few drills simply because the majority of the drills in the session were position specific and had more worth to the goalkeeping coaches in attendance.

With this in mind I redesigned the whole session to be of more interest of the non-goalkeeping coaches than the goalkeeping coaches. There would still be merit for the goalkeeping coaches to be able to learn and benefit from the session but now the session allowed for all coaches in attendance rather than one specific demographic. The new session that I had designed was aimed at using drills that would allow goalkeepers to join into the main session as well as having drills that would allow them to work specifically on their goalkeeping.

Before redesigning the session, I wrote down what areas would be the most problematic for the goalkeeping position especially for younger goalkeepers. As well as this, I thought of areas of team sessions that goalkeepers are made to do that have no relevance to their position like runs/fitness training and also areas of outfield play that only benefits the outfield players and not the goalkeepers i.e. – goal scoring drills.

Using this info to direct my planning the running of the session was as follows:

1. Goalkeeping Warmup.

2. Drill one – Goalkeeping arc and looking at positioning.

3. Drill two – Sheepdogs working on communication.

4. Drill three – Goalkeeper condition showing coaches drills goalkeepers can do rather than the sprints/runs which are more akin to their position.

5. Drill four – 1v1 squares working on closing attackers at close quarters.

6. Drill five – Big goal, little goal showing the importance of narrowing the angles.

7. Drill six – Smash the turtle using tackle pads to catch high balls under contact.

8. Drill seven – GK invasion grids which are small-sided games in a 10m x10m square with a shoot on sight policy, teams can be even or uneven to allow for more shots.

9. Drill eight – Kicking over walls and through the gaps which mirrors the only two kicks in Gaelic football.

10. Drill nine – 15min Question and answer session for coaches and goalkeepers.

It turned out to be a very good coaching session for both goalkeepers and coaches alike. The Q&A session at the end was also very beneficial especially for the non-goalkeeping coaches, as they asked questions that gave them a deeper knowledge on how to fulfil their goalkeeper’s needs within their sessions.

The two best pieces of advice I gave both the goalkeepers and coaches was as follows:

For the goalkeepers, I explained to them that anything they learned today from myself was only one way of doing things. It is not the be all and end all and if another coach comes along and contradicts what I say that is fine. Whenever they are attending courses or being coached by goalkeeping coaches during the rest of their career the most important thing to remember is that the coach can only pass on how they played in goal. It is the goalkeeper’s responsibility to take that information and fit it into their game if and wherever they can.

Simply put, if two coaches teach the goalkeeper two different ways of completing the same skill, the goalkeeper may find that coach A’s way is more comfortable for them, they may find coach B’s way is more comfortable. They may find that a combination of both coach A and coach B’s ways works best. They may even find that neither way works for them and they will come up with their own way of executing the skill themselves. Always remember that whatever way is most comfortable for the goalkeeper is the best way.

In regard to the coaches, the best advice I gave to them was in relation to what I told the goalkeepers in the previous paragraph. Coaches must remember that they are only the coach and not the goalkeeper. They are there to impart their wisdom and guide the goalkeeper as best they can. It is the goalkeeper’s responsibility to use that knowledge to improve their goalkeeping performance as best they can.

The coaches must not get hung up on how the result is achieved but whether or not the desired result has been achieved at all. You can teach the goalkeeper the various skills and techniques required to perform their skills competently and after that allow the goalkeeper the space to develop them into their own goalkeeping style. For example, if you show a goalkeeper a certain way to perform a skill to get a certain outcome, resist the urge to chastise the goalkeeper if they get the desired outcome without using your technique verbatim.

If the desired outcome is attained, it should not matter how the goalkeeper attained it as long as they are consistent with their technique and the main characteristics of the skill are present.

It is your role as the coach to understand their skill technique, how they perform it and to spot the imperfections within that technique and work with the goalkeeper to improve them.

I really love running coach the coaches sessions because it allows me to broaden the goalkeeping knowledge of all types of coaches and not just goalkeeping coaches. For this session, I am very happy I was able to spot the changes needed to make the session both more appealing and worthwhile for the non-goalkeeping coaches because it meant that the session itself became more beneficial for everyone involved from goalkeeper, to coaches and even for myself.

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