STEVEN POACHER: Time is now to grow coaching tree

COACH education is a subject very close to my heart, it’s a huge passion of mine. As a coach I never want to stop learning.

With that in mind, I always carry a little black book with me; quite a bit of my week seems to be spent in a car, so therefore the book very seldom leaves the car. I would regularly get an idea or see something in a game or a session that I feel might help improve my own coaching or the quality of the training sessions I deliver and I would scribble it down in the black notebook.

I really enjoy challenging players at training, I like to take players out of their comfort zone without actually taking them out of their depth but you need to be brave as a coach to try this and be willing to embrace and encourage new methods or ideas.

I feel I have sounded a bit repetitive over the last few weeks in this column but I cannot stress enough that this is simply the best time of the year for a coach to learn.

I picked up a couple of little coaching nuggets recently while watching a basketball session, a soccer session and a rugby session from some reasonably high-level teams in those particular sports but also from reading some books recently in school.

Even one little idea could possibly ignite three or four from that in your brain because all coaches have a creative brain. However, for me, the greatest resource we continue to have as coaches is certainly each other.

Last week I travelled to the west of Ireland to deliver a pitch based session on a ‘games based approach to training’ and the beauty of the session for the 80-plus coaches in attendance was it had been tailored to suit coaches at all levels of the game, from u-10 right up to adult senior level and offered coaches a world of ideas to take back to their own training sessions.

The session included approximately ten different games, including some fun games, focused games, transition games and conditioned games relevant to all ages, some of these games I had actually ran at u-12 sessions and the exact same game with a little adaptation at senior inter-county level.

The session included break ball games, kicking games, scoring games, spatial awareness games, transition games and games to improve conditioning so the coaches got a huge volume of ideas. I have to say the young u-16 squad from the club were excellent contributors.

When speaking to the coaches, I mentioned imagining the game I was demonstrating as a tree, what grows from trees only branches, so they should be trying to branch out three or four more games from the actual game they are seeing.

Also the question was posed to me quite regularly, “Stevie could we use that at senior level or could we use that at u-14 level?” The answer is simple, of course we can use any game at any level but you apply the STEP principle.

What I mean by that, is the space, time, equipment and players, so at underage level if running a scoring exercise, the space might not be 45 yards from goal but maybe 30 yards, the time might not be 90 seconds but maybe 45 seconds, the equipment you might have more balls in play, and players you may use less or more depending on your numbers.

This is a fabulous time of the year folks to upskill yourself or other coaches within your club, during the off season to load yourself and others with fresh and innovative ideas. I am really looking forward to our annual Coach Education Day on Saturday, November 30 at 10am when the likes of James Horan, former Mayo manager, Damian McErlain, the successful back-to-back Ulster and All-Ireland winning Derry minor coach, and Kieran McGeary, former Footballer of the Year, all descend upon our school here in St Joseph’s, Newry for the best coach education event in Ireland.

I am always a great believer that if you attend a coach education session, day or evening and pick up one small thing which will aid your own coaching it’s been a huge success.

If you are interested in attending our coaching event, please contact myself on 07779780919 or stevepoacher@hotmail.com.