PATRICK MORRISON: Coaching is essential

By Patrick Morrison

IN 2015, my first year with Armagh, we played a challenge game against Dublin down in DCU.

This was the first year of their five in a row. We had started with a strong team with a handful of our regular starters rested. Dublin on the other hand, started without a good portion of their regular 15.

One man that did not play any part was Stephen Cluxton. As the warm-ups finished, those not involved with the game exited to another pitch for an extended warm-up.

Cluxton and his goalkeeping coach the setup for their own session at the far end of the adjacent pitch. Hailed as the number one goalkeeper in the game, I watched intently wanting to pick up anything that good help me improve in my own goalkeeping ability.

His one-on-one session lasted for the full game. Cluxton and his coach worked on a variety of different skills from one-on-ones to reaction shots to kicking.

One aspect that I did notice throughout his session was it appeared to be more technical in nature and involved a lot of discussion time between him and his coach. Each drill he completed focused more on the stages of the skills rather than their performance. This type of individual coaching is essential for the development of any goalkeeper.

It means more time is spent focusing on the specific areas of the goalkeeper’s game that either need worked on or fine-tuned to optimise their potential.

Focusing on the techniques of the goalkeeper is very important during these types of sessions. All the aspects need to be looked at in their various micro-skills to ensure the goalkeeper develops.

It’s not just about putting the goalkeeper through a number of game related training drills they are a time to perfect the skills and techniques they already have. There is time to learn new skills or even to use their other foot.

A productive and well-prepared one-on-one session is much more than just another training session for both coach and goalkeeper. The session affords the coach some high-quality contact time with their goalkeeper on an individual basis. This quality time allows for focus on any imperfections and correct them for better competition performance.

It is technique correction of the overall skill by focusing on them in their various stages, the micro skills. By improving the ‘keeper’s performance in these micro skills, it improves the overall skill and overall performance.

It is also important for the coach to become more than a goalkeeping coach in these sessions as they will look to assess more than the goalkeeping ability of their ‘keeper.

The coach quietly assesses thepsychological aspects of their goalkeepers by looking at their off-field lifestyles. Their life outside the football contact time. Work. Diet. Lifestyle. Relationships in and out of football.

The coach will also discuss a goalkeeper’s goals for the season. From that, they will then collectively form an action plan to ensure these goals are met within the required timeframe.

From the goalkeeper’s viewpoint it is important that they come to these one-on-one sessions fully focused and understand that any changes will take more than the one session. It will take time working on their own.

For this to happen the goalkeeper must be open to learn, unlearn and relearn all and any parts of their game.

There are three things that the goalkeeper must do in regard to these sessions:

1) Take note of all coaching points into their training diary.

2) Work on the coaching points in their own time.

3) Liaise with their goalkeeping coach about any developments or issues they may have encountered.

There are six essential elements for any one-on-one session to have for it to be successful:

1) Planning with provisions for possible interruptions and unseen events.

2) Structure so the goalkeeper knows they have moved onto the next part of the session.

3) Focus to allow the goalkeeper to understand what exactly it is they are working to improve.

4) Discussion is essential for the ‘keeper’s development.

5) Purpose to give an understanding as to why they are doing the session and an outcome can be seen.

6) Recorded for future reference.

I am confident that Cluxton’s session mentioned above was not the only one he had during that year. To be the best, it takes an insatiable amount of hard work to reach the top and the same amount again to stay there.

It is important to ensure that the on-on-one sessions with your goalkeepers are continuous throughout the year as they are typical a personal training session for the goalkeeper.

They are a perfect time to conduct some skill acquisition and technique correction because the basis of all goalkeeper development comes from these one-on-one technical sessions.

Without these goalkeeping sessions, the speed at which the goalkeeper develops is reduced and may even stagnate or worse regress. This is why coaching your goalkeepers in a one-on-one setting is an essential practice.

Email:pmgoalkeeping@hotmail.com