[00:00:00,000] [Jamie:] Hello and welcome to CoachCast by England Football Learning, the coaching podcast that brings you insight from people across the game. Today we're chatting to Matt Jones, an FA Coach Development Officer, to discover his journey so far, how he's helping to create opportunities and to get advice on managing difference. Hello Matt, welcome to the show.
[00:00:33,440] [Matt Jones:] Good afternoon, thanks for having me.
[00:00:36,450] [Louise:] It's good to have you here. So let's make a start by asking you what your role is at the FA and kind of what you specialise in.
[00:00:43,514] [Matt Jones:] Yeah cool, no problem. So my job title is FA Regional Coach Development Officer based in the grassroots team and in layman's terms I try and help coach coaches and I'm just going to put the emphasis on the try bit as well as the help bit and that's supporting coaches in the grassroots game predominantly so those that might be starting out so your typical soccer mom, soccer dad, the volunteers of the game who are the lifeblood if you like of our beautiful game but then working up with your more intentional coaches so those at level two maybe aspire to have a professional career in the game, move on to A for B so that's where the grassroots game sort of links to the professional game so yeah trying to help coaches fall in love with the process of coaching and grow an appetite to want to learn and get better.
[00:01:28,957] [Jamie:] Well coach to coaches sounds like you're the man for this next task then because as this is a coaching podcast listeners could be listening to this on the way to training so we think it's a good idea to give them a little bit of advice at the top of the show.
[00:01:42,983] [Louise:] Yep we call this your arrival activity. So we give you 30 seconds and you've got to come up with as many top coaching tips as you can. Okay cool. Okay so we've got some music to help you along with that, put a bit of tension in the air.
[00:01:58,931] [Matt Jones:] I would expect nothing less.
[00:02:01,919] [Louise:] Okay are we ready? Time starts now.
[00:02:04,480] [Matt Jones:] So the first one would be to be yourself but keep an open mind so we talk about having a growth mindset rather than a fixed mindset. The value of experience, for me coaching is about getting out on the grass trying things hopefully succeeding but any failing is also a lesson in disguise so go back to plan do but also that important review process and the third one I'll go for a hat trick of tips is write things down whether you're a pen and paper person or just notes in your phone I'm forever just jotting things down. Good coach is a thief you just got to know why you're stealing what you're stealing.
[00:02:37,350] [Jamie:] We got that in just there. I'll give you that three great tips just before the whistle we'll say.
[00:02:42,815] [Matt Jones:] I think I flirted with Fergie time there didn't I? But as a Man United fan hopefully you can let me off as well.
[00:02:49,401] [Jamie:] We're very accommodating here. Right well let's get started and find out all about you. Let's start with what was your first experience of football like?
[00:02:59,311] [Matt Jones:] Yeah I started playing in the back garden with my older brother at sort of four or five but didn't start affiliated football until I was sort of seven eight years old with my local Charter Standard Club as it would probably be known now called Ravens head Reds in Nottinghamshire and played right through until I was yeah 17 - 18 and went to university and I carried on playing at university so yeah I don't know whether I can boast to have had a playing career but the playing experiences I had I more often than not loved and that's a big reason why I now feel blessed and fortunate to work in in coaching and coach development because I want to help other players fall in love with the game through helping coaches help their players. And falling in love with the game that doesn't have to be affiliated football like you say rightfully so like that informal play is absolutely huge so thinking with that as well as then obviously going into affiliate as well. Did you have a good experience of football growing up?
[00:03:54,975] [Matt Jones:] I did you know - putting on the shirt, being with your friends, representing something feeling part of something I just loved the environment of being round the game training on a match day but then also the little things in between you know the social aspects we would go out on I say club nights out we're only sort of seven or eight so we're not talking big large nights out we're talking you know go into the bowling alley so just you know the real social aspect as well as the the football aspect for me was really important and you talking about informal football or rec football some of my best memories were jumpers for goal posts at a weekend but also at school and funnily enough in my first two schools so infant and primary we didn't have a school football team and part of me thinks was that was that a good or a bad thing at the time I would have jumped at the chance to play school football but the fact that we didn't I think meant that we filled that gap and that void with even more recreational self-led opportunities. So in coaching land we talk about giving the players ownership indirectly we were given ownership as a group of young lads. We would create our own games you know some of these games that we would advocate in coaching land now but back in the day it was that unofficial informal learning which hopefully made me a bit better at the game but certainly gave me some great memories with my friends.
[00:05:13,585] [Jamie:] Do you want to talk a little bit more in detail about the experiences that you've had then coaching wise?
[00:05:19,613] [Matt Jones:] So I started volunteering when I was in the sixth form so I would have been what 16 - 17 and me and a couple of friends were just asked joining on work with the year nine football team and my PE teacher knew that I had an appetite for sport and more specifically leadership so went on your classic junior sports leadership awards community sports leadership awards kind of took off from there. So that's built into going to university to study a degree in sports studies and whilst I was there started to coach outside of the degree going back to what I said earlier about the importance of experience. I went to the USA with Challenger sports something that I'd strongly recommend not just for the football coaching but the cultural experience sometimes we were working on a small camp which might have been a single man camp so there was just me and a group of players compared to a ten coach camp where you could have had over nearly 300 children but then one of the first jobs I had I spent a year coaching for a sports development unit based at a local authority so I was coaching primary school children multi skills in the day and then in the evening we would set up random hot spots in areas of social deprivation attach yourself to youth clubs just to keep the kids engaging off the streets so the experience I was getting in the evening compared to coaching a primary school were different but they were valuable experiences. I've worked still in the classic grassroots game of coaching you know five to sixteen year olds in your Saturday Sunday local football I have also worked with open age adult grassroots football men's and women's and then in the last nine years of my own coaching career I've sort of gone into working in the female game so centers of excellence, play development centers now known as regional talent centers I spent a year working with Aston Villa ladies when a coaching colleague of mine asked me to come on and do some some part-time work with them for a season before we moved into the more established WSL. Yeah I've tried to just fast forward my own experiences there because they shape me in the advice that I I give or try to give and most of my advice comes from my own failings. So that's life.
[00:07:24,769] [Jamie:] Picking up on that where you saying obviously there's a very young age going into a completely different environment and how did you then deal with those emotions and process those emotions I imagine it's kind of a bit like listeners now might only just be getting involved in coaching and maybe going to the first session and just being a little bit it's a bit of a daunting experience maybe a bit similar to how you felt when you first started or when you was in America - how do you process those emotions and make sure that you keep focused?
[00:07:53,531] [Matt Jones:] First thing I want to do is reassure the coaches so I don't say this next bit to intimidate but coaching is hard but it is not impossible it is for me one of the most rewarding experiences that you can go through is coaching and don't get me wrong I've probably had as many bad challenging sessions in my own humble opinions I have had good successful sessions but that's the beauty of it - so I mentioned earlier around a failing is a lesson in disguise. I've learned more from the sessions that I thought we're gonna go better that didn't in reality than those that maybe went really really well and I gave myself a pat on the back and it's important to do the latter especially if you're a grassroots coach because coaching can also be a lonely place. So you've got to get good at being self-aware. So I mentioned earlier one of my top three tips was be yourself but be open-minded because if you're on a course where we're supporting you in in situ visits - you've got someone to go to if you're being supported by an FA mentor then you've got someone to lean on. But if you're coaching alone and it's one of your first experiences and you might not feel that you can turn to somebody then take a breath don't put yourself under too much pressure just make a few notes in your phone and then maybe give it a night or two because usually when things don't go quite so well in a coaching session your emotions are out of the surface and you're probably honing in on 5% when actually the other 95% has gone pretty well and I go back to earlier - have the kids had a fun safe experience they might have had a better one if you'd have done certain things - don't get me wrong and that's how you get your marginal gain experiences from your point of view and to make yourself better, but equally take a step back and put perspective on it because it might only be one or two things that you could have tweaked and also make sure you are being fair on yourself and saying - no that did go well because of this this and this. So yeah except that the coaching can be tough and challenging but equally it can be very rewarding to help somebody get better at something. So break it down into small moments rather than looking at too many big things and enjoy coaching in the moment and building relationships with your players and getting to know them so yeah quite often we're heavily focused if we're not careful on the tech tact and maybe the physicality of the game but there's so many wonderful things to come out of working in players social or psychological corner so and for those that aren't familiar with it that would be the four corner model that we work to in FA coaching land of helping a player develop holistically. So across those four corners tech tack, physical, psych and social and trying to cover all bases.
[00:10:37,924] [Jamie:] What would you say are key attributes or skills that you think coaches should have?
[00:10:44,032] [Matt Jones:] Honesty so honesty with yourself which I mentioned so I won't repeat that but honesty and integrity with with what it is that you're you're doing and or trying to do. Make yourself approachable open-minded to learn want to get better. Enthusiasm because you can infuse other people but again if you're coaching alone you need to be able to infuse yourself to want to go out there and put on the best session you can possible or manage the best matchday experience knowing that matchday and training are very very different.Remain inquisitive I try to on a weekly basis I say daily I can't boast of it achieve that all the time because sometimes you do get lost life gets in the way especially for volunteer coaches but on a weekly basis just say to yourself right what one or two things am I going to try and go out of my way to learn about coaching that's going to help make me better and it might not be football it might be something from another sport, it might be something from another walk of life. Again, if I'm analyzing what I've done when I first started out to coach I would listen to respond which isn't necessarily always a good thing so you might be talking to me and you're halfway through giving me an answer which might have been to a question or you're posing a problem to me and I'm already thinking right I'm going to give you this perfect answer so I mean well in my intent what I'm then missing out on because I'm planning my answer before I've listened to you finish your response. I'm missing out on maybe some really good information, some gold dust to then help inform me to give a better answer. So I try now to listen to learn about the person that I'm speaking to. Sometimes that comes with the challenge of dealing with a pause and being comfortable with what we might term as awkward silence. And I remember my dad saying to me, if you can control awkward silence, it makes you really good in the art of negotiation.
[00:12:41,977] [Louise:] So to remember that one.
[00:12:44,251] [Matt Jones:] Yeah, it's worked in my favor when I've been negotiating repairs on the car. Yeah, so another walk a lot. But let's bring it back to coaching just to pause for a minute, let the person breathe. They then sometimes have added to their answer. And then that shaped the response that then I've given because what I was going to say, I'll then change. So I think those communication skills, especially in a one to one situation. And that's come from thinking about how I listen.
[00:13:11,970] [Louise} Yeah, that's good.
[00:13:13,724] [Matt Jones:] I'm not saying I'm a world class listener. I'm just saying I'm always working to get better as a listener. [Louise:] So could you tell us a bit more about your current role within the FA and how you're helping diversity and inclusion in football? Yeah, so if you look at the representation of this country, male, female, so you got the gender, but then also ethnicity, and people with a disability, that's not represented in the football world. So the FA want to be positive and proactive in making sure that if it's where we're boasting it to be a game for all, we want to make sure that we're engaging with communities. So I'm part of a team of eight regional coaches of officers who are tasked to go out there and specifically target coaches from ethnic diverse communities.
Now, there's a steer towards black and Asian, but that's not to say that different communities aren't important to us. Every community is important to us. So that is why we've been pulled together as a team of eight, led by a national manager. But we have a saying in our line of work in DNI, which is DNI is everyone's responsibility. And we're putting a focus on it to be positive and proactive. But it's a spotlight on something which has been maybe a problem which we've wanted to solve for a number of years. And now we've got a team who's biased towards it. But that's not to say that everything should fall on our shoulders as a team of eight officers or nine without a national lead manager. And it's a collective effort. And someone asked me the other day, what about the DNI party role? And for me, there are two key things that are going to make me better at being more diverse and more inclusive. And that is one being open minded, so learning about different cultures. And I've certainly learned about my unconscious bias, which is some of the things that you don't know about yourself until you listen and people point things out and you take it on board. And the other thing is just as simple as being a nice person. You mentioned earlier, Jamie, about the qualities of a coach, I think sometimes get what you give out and respect is earned. But also there should be a baseline level of respect of this is who I am. It's nice to meet you. Tell me about yourself and then we'll see where the conversation and dialogue takes us from there. So yeah, these roles are exciting roles because it's the FA making an obvious statement of intent. But it's a collective effort that's going to move the dial and shift things on in a positive way to make sure that we have got good representation from people of all walks of life.
[00:15:43,111] [Jamie:] Are the any success stories that you've got that you might be able to share in terms of the DNI space in the West Midlands that yourself or the team have happened to work on at all?
[00:15:52,068] [Matt Jones:] Yeah, there's one just recently says there's a lady who I met Riz Barani at the first face to face coach development workshop that I delivered post pandemic. Riz was in the audience along with another sort of 15 coaches. And we were delivering a workshop which involved theoretical and practical and anyway, the arrival activity to quote you from the start of this podcast was, tell us about your coaching journey. So had them mingling talking to one another and Riz came over to speak to me. And it says, I'll swear you up to show I've done the playmaker I've done the instruction to coach in football said how did you find those courses which are digital and she said really enjoyed them. And I learned a lot about the what to coach but now I want to learn how to bring it to life. So in Riz telling me that I was able to tweak what was planned. I think we were looking at the benefits of small sided games that night I was working with a group of players had myself miked up. Coaches were watching me on the sideline and hopefully they went away with a few new ideas. But one of the questions that Riz asked me was, Oh, we talked about the step principle. So what does that look like? So in demonstrating the benefits of small sided games, we took a few games and looked at right, what can you change around steps of space, task equipment players. And at the end of the night, she came back to me and said, Matt, this has been brilliant. It's really added value to what I've learned digitally. And let me fast forward the story. She's been on every face to face CPD workshop, not that I've just delivered, but my counterparts in the grassroots team across the West Midlands region have so Stacey Miles who works the women and girls game and my colleague Chris Lowe who works in the P unit. So she's been to the generic CPDs. She's been to the women and girls coach development groups. She started on her UA for C six, eight months ago and has just recently been signed off and she is driving things on with other volunteers at her local football club Birmingham impact and they're moving to a new venue and they've got accreditation in the new chart standard format. So for me, you asked me for a success story - that that for me is success on a whole number of different levels. Her individual coaching going from playmaker to UA for C qualified. But more importantly to us is she's wanted to go out there and learn how to get better in between her formal qualifications, which is what we would call coach development. Whereas coach education is the courses on the pathway. And in doing so, she's had a number of different touch points from FA members of staff, including she's had mentoring from one of the women and girls focus mentors for a good 10 to 20 hours as well as a UA for C in situ support. So yeah, that's, that's one example that springs to mind. On the back of that message. And how can other coaches like Riz get involved and have that experience and help themselves develop?
[00:18:35,269] [Matt Jones:] So Riz got in touch with Birmingham County FA and that's one of the single biggest stakeholders that we work with at the football association. So there's people like myself are employed nationally, but we're deployed locally. So we would work with Birmingham FA in this example to make sure that their coach development offer is meeting the needs of their local coaches. And also the County FA will have links out to local clubs. So you might have someone who wants to coach and we can steer them in the direction of, okay, here's the courses that are available to you. Here's some coach development opportunities, but they might also be looking for a club or an organisation where they can just go and get some experience. And I know clubs up and down, not just the region, but the country would be crying out for volunteers who can give a couple of hours a week of an evening or a weekend to go and get involved. So I'd certainly steer them in the direction of the County FA football development teams. Also people like ourselves via the boot room, YouTube, we've got our community, which is like a Facebook for coaches. But I'm a big advocate also for that face to face delivery. So if you see any opportunities to get in a room with County FA, FA staff or other coaches on coaching workshops, then yeah, I would encourage you to have a look on the websites at the various things taking place locally or nationally and get yourself in a room.
[00:19:54,384] [Jamie:] Great advice. Following up from that, are there any other projects or initiatives in the West Midlands that you'd like to raise a little bit of awareness of at all?
[00:20:02,384] [Matt Jones:] Yeah, so we have regular generic CPD events taking place across those five counties as per every region would. And there's a menu of title workshops. So I mentioned earlier about the benefits of small sided game, one that we delivered is also managing the match day experience. So how you can make sure that everything that you're working on in your training sessions then comes to fruition on a match day. And that also might be managing the environment around the match day. So how you work with officials, parents and spectators, bits and pieces like that to make sure it's a comfortable experience for all involved. There's another workshop that I've been tasked with leading on, which is supporting the players through transition of different game formats. They move up from 5v5, 7v7, 9v9, 11v11. So there's a menu of generic CPD workshops going into the new season, which are designed to try and help coaches but also solve problems. So we try and pre-empt what a lot of grassroots coaches would be dealing with and go, right, maybe they need some support around this, this and this. So that would be your generic piece. As I say, my colleague and I, Stacey, we have coach development groups and communities of practice. So my contact details will no doubt be linked in some way, shape or form to this podcast, or we'll make sure there's a link to all of the regional offices. So get in touch with people like myself and Stacey to inquire about being parts of those coach development groups or communities of practice. And I think just being inquisitive on all of the platforms that we've talked about there, boot room, community, YouTube, because we're trying to engage with people in the digital space and make people aware of all of the education that's in our archive, of which there is loads of ideas. And in my experience, most coaches come on courses or workshops because they want new ideas, at which point I'll then say, great, we can give you ideas, but we don't just want to turn you, to use another food analogy, we don't just want to turn you into a cook who follows a recipe, we want to maybe give you the confidence to be a chef, who can look at a recipe and go, right, I'll take a bit of this, a little bit of that. And if I go full circle into the step principle, it's giving coaches the confidence to go, ah, this is what Matt meant on that workshop around step, I'm going to take that game that I've always used and make it a bit easier, harder, or just mix it up and make it different by changing the task that I'm asking or changing the number of players who are on which team and maybe go from a 5v5 to a 6v4. So we want to make sure that we're giving coaches the content, but then also the confidence to go out there and experiment with new ideas because time's precious for all of us. And as much as I'm talking about, you know, get face to face, come on workshops, enrol on things digitally, people don't necessarily always have the time. But if we can give them the tools in their locker to be able to work smart, especially as a volunteer coach, then they're going to get better themselves because we're giving them hopefully good tools that they can apply themselves.
[00:23:01,184] [Louise:] So from your past experience, you've coached various levels and age groups. Can you give us some of the key differences that you found between different age groups?
[00:23:14,264] [Matt Jones:] Yeah, so age and stage, that's something that you might hear a lot of coached developers use. So you could have a beginner, who traditionally we would think is a very young player, say six, but you could have a beginner who's 16. Equally, you could have, let's use the term expert, but you could have an expert or should I say a very experienced player who's 12. So we have to be very, very careful when we use the term age and stage, it's not always age related. Their stage could be what experience they come with, how long have they been playing for and also how good are they at playing the game. So my experience when working with coaches across different age groups is look at what your players can and can't do, but really focusing on the can and be careful that you don't focus too much on what they're not so good at. Go back to what we said earlier, because especially if they're new to the game, it's a case of trying to catch them doing something well so that they grow a confidence quickly and want to come back because they know that you're going to support them. So one of the things I've learnt working across the age groups is don't pigeonhole because I'm just turning up to an age group which might be under 16s, there still might be some beginners. Even within the same group, I could have that difference. And I think also looking at it philosophically, so focusing on those that work with five to 11 years old is I worked out that someone who is five years old has been on this planet over 2000 days. When you talk about it like that, you're thinking that is not a long amount of time. So actually what they need is, there's your ball, there's your space, have as many touches on the ball as you can, get comfortable with it, doesn't matter if you lose control, I'm here to help you get comfortable with that ball. That's it. There's nothing more complicated than that. At the end, or maybe even at the start, we'll mix it up a bit, we're going to play a few games. Those games might be two a side, three a side, four a side. Why? Because you can have lots of touches on the ball. That would be another tip I would throw out there to coaches and not just for young players but in particular for those in the foundation phases. Can you give your players plenty of opportunities to get on a ball, stay on the ball, master the ball, get confident, because from confidence they're going to get competent and hopefully then they're going to be creative with the ball. We talk about creativity, don't kill the creativity too soon, especially in young players, because the ideas that they all come with as five, six and seven year olds, and some of them might seem crazy and ridiculous, but we want to make sure that we're fostering that and not destroying it. That would be another thing to highlight. Keep that creativity within your kids.
[00:25:43,743] [Jamie:] You mentioned difference, just going a little bit back to the start of your answer. Do you want to tell us a little bit more about what managing difference actually means, what it looks like and how coaches maybe can spot when they might need to help with it?
[00:25:56,743] [Matt Jones:] Yeah, I was thinking about this driving here today. Managing difference, how we define is making sure players feel appropriately challenged. If you take the example from a few moments ago, if you've got a group of say under-16s, someone who's rarely kicked the ball to someone who's played for 10 years, they're going to need different challenges, aren't they? The player who's not got much experience might need a little bit more time, a little bit more patience. It's how you then build that into a practice where the player who's been playing for 10 years actually feels under a polite bit of pressure to get better on the ball so that they're experiencing some success and feeling like they're getting better. Now, at the risk of contradicting myself, sometimes in order to feel better and to feel like you're developing, you need an element of failure or knockback. Then it's how many times do we allow them to experience that failure before it goes from being a healthy failure to an unhealthy one where they start to become demoralized and lose a passion and a desire to keep going. That then takes you into resilience. We're building an element of resilience. That's a skill, being able to gauge. Things that you might look for are body language of the player, counting how many times roughly, bearing in mind the skill of a coach to observe what's going on, eyes in the back of your head. You've got 10 to 12 players or more if you work with 11 aside. You can't always be looking all the time, but it's putting yourself in a good coaching position to go, right, I've set this challenge. That player's working on their level. That player's working on their level. How do I make sure that I arm myself with how they're doing? Go back in. It might be a case of, right, I'm going to make sure that within two minutes of setting the challenge, I've spent a good 10 seconds looking at every player twice and being alone with my thoughts. Another good coaching tip would be you don't have to fill the silence with white noise as a coach. Sometimes silence is powerful. I'll use that silence by taking a step back, looking at how Johnny's getting on, how Josephine's getting on and going, oh, they've had three attempts at that. They've got marginally better. Well done, Johnny. This is why I'm saying well done, so give it purposeful praise. Josephine's maybe struggling a little bit there, but I'm not going to go in because it's only her second attempt. I'll see how she does on her fourth or fifth attempt. Josephine's got a little bit better, right, a little bit of an opportunity to give us some purposeful praise now. Whereas if it had gone in after two, thinking that she was really failing when actually she was just going through a learning process, she's missed an opportunity to self-correct, get better. Equally, it might be really obvious they could be getting outwardly frustrated. They might even come up to you and ask for help, go back to a good coach, make themselves approachable. So you might get down to their level if you work with the younger players, the dots, so that you're not intimidated by standing too tall. So yeah, things like body language, observation, listening skills. These are all kind of things that you can use to sort of gauge how something is working or not working, where they might need a little bit of guidance or support or help. Then you get into the territory of, do I go and help with the hammer, which might represent the command? Can you do this? Of which there is value. But go back to what we said earlier, that might kill creativity if I say, look, do it my way. Equally, it might paint a really clear picture if I demonstrate for them. How they might, say, dribble or manoeuvre with the ball. Equally, I might go in and ask them a question and say, oh, have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? How many different parts of the foot catcher can you use to move the ball or turn with or control it with? So I'm not giving them the answer. I'm getting them to think about the answers of which there might be many. So all those possibilities are going off, you know, those light bulb moments. So that they get into the habit of asking themselves these questions. So yeah, stepping back, looking, taking on board information, timing, absolutely crucial coaching skills. And I'm always working to try and master them, always. And they will differ with different groups of players, because every individual player is different. And they will need different things from you.
[00:30:10,382] [Jamie:] It's a really challenging thing, isn't it? Obviously, it's very important, but especially if you've got so many players and there's quite a lot to observe. But one thing I took from that is learning takes time. So obviously, you are wanting to manage difference, but just giving them that little element of time there to see if they can *** it and then timing your intervention a little bit better than maybe just diving straight in. If you just caught them the first look, they're not doing it, I'll jump in and try and give them a bit of support.
[00:30:36,543] [Matt Jones:] Yeah, and learning does take time, and not just for the players, but for you as a coach. I mean, we started this podcast by you asking about my journey. And when I got back from coaching in the States, I felt like I got 10 times better after my first summer. And I was thinking, what else can I learn? So here I am 20 plus years later, the learning that I've acquired, it flabbergasts me. And in the last six years, I'm just about to start my sixth season coaching university football. Coaching at university has been brilliant and has enabled me to keep my hand in practicing what I preach. And if I'm going to stand up in front of an audience, and I try not to preach, but if they're going to buy into me, it helps if I've got up-to-date experience where I go, I tried this on Monday, and do you know what? It didn't work, but I learned this. And they look at you and go, hang on, you're wearing an FA track suit, and you're telling us about something that didn't go well. Absolutely I am. I've got to be open to that learning. And that's taken, as you said, time, Jamie.
[00:31:32,303] [Jamie:] Just bringing this part of the show to an end, Matt. What would your advice be to any aspiring coaches out there? And that could either be general top tips, or what we've spoke quite well about today is about managing difference.
[00:31:45,942] [Matt Jones:] Cool. I'll take the latter part of the question first. We'll go managing difference. Up and down the levels is something that I like to do. Let me give you an example. Classic bib snatch game. Some players will have bibs in their shorts, and there'll be catchers who are trying to get the bibs out of said shorts. So if you want to manage difference in that game, assuming that equipment allows, if you've got a player who's really striving to keep up, but obviously wants to play the game and you need to manage difference, you might give them two bibs, whereas the one who's forging ahead, you might just give them one bib. So that would be a way of levelling up and levelling down, as an example, using a classic game which most grassroots coaches have got. And then if you move that game on, so it might be a case of the striver who is striving to keep up, rather than give them a ball, it might be right you give them a third bib, so more responsibility, more to protect, whereas the player who is forging ahead might actually have a ball at their feet and they've got a dribble with both the bib and the ball and protect both. It's almost like they're protecting the ball at the front and the bib at the back. Flip that game around, someone who is chasing, i.e. trying to retrieve the bib or the ball, they might be struggling. So the fact that there are more people wearing bibs in the game and the fact that players who are towards the top end of ability, dribbling a ball and having a bib, have some success in taking something off the more experienced player, again, what that's going to do for their sort of self-esteem and confidence. So another good way of doing it, and this is in computer game world, is the use of lives and you can distinguish between, okay, the player who's really striving hard to keep up, they might have more lives, so we're going to give them five, that player we're only going to give three, maybe even two, maybe even one life to the player who's really forging ahead. And that might be used in classic games like King of the Ring. Now normally what happens in a game like King of the Ring is the weaker players, if I can be so blunt, so those that are striving to keep up, those are the players that fall out of the game first, but those are the players that need the most practice. So think about it, don't set your practices up to fail the players. So if you're going to do things like King of the Ring, another way of managing differences other than giving them lives, you might set up two parallel games side by side, so if they're caught in that game, they don't then become a catcher because they clearly need to work on their ball-dribbling skills. They lose a life, but they go and join another grid where there might be more time and space and less catches, so they get more success, more repetition of dribbling and protecting the ball. Groupings, think about how you group players together. So we mentioned earlier around do you have a player on their own, some alone time with the ball, do you have them matched up in a 1 v 1, do you have them in a 1 v 2? And again if I take the 2 v 1 as an example, you then might rotate that, so the two players who are striving to keep up, i.e. the weaker players, might go up against one player who's very competent. But again we've got to be very, very careful because kids are quite intuitive, they're quite switched on, especially the older they get, so you don't want to demoralise them because they'll know I'm always in the team of two, appreciate you trying to help me coach, but when am I going to get the chance to be on my own? So you might rotate that 2 v 1, but you might be careful about how you rotate it, so they don't remain on the team of one for too long, but you might just at least give them a go so that you show some trust and also you give them an opportunity maybe to have a go on their own, but you might value success in different ways. So the two weaker players against the one stronger player, you might say to the one stronger player, right, can you keep the ball for 30 seconds? Whereas for one of the weaker players, being the one against the two, you might say for every second that you keep that ball, I'm going to give you a point. So it's a different scoring system. So these are clever ways, I say clever, I've stolen most of them, go back to what I said earlier, a good coach is a thief, he's got to know why you're stealing what you steal and also use it appropriately. These are, for me, clever ways and intelligent ways of subtly managing difference. And those would be things that I've experimented with and flirted with in my own coaching. You've just got to know when to use the right tool at the right time. Promotion and relegation is also a good one. Again, it seems a bit cut throat, but you might have practices again taking place, four or five different practices, where you could have five one v ones, a group of ten in total, and you're going to play for 90 seconds, game in 90 seconds, can I dribble my ball to an end line or to a goal and try and get a point, and can my opponent do the same? At the end, if you win, you move up, if you lose, you move down. Now by virtue of the fact that you're moving up and down, chances are you're going to face someone who's of a closer ability based on performance, roughly, give or take. Now you still might end up with a few David versus Goliaths, but on that, remember David won that battle by being clever. But the other thing is that you give them a chance, even though it's a short amount of time, to experience playing against people of a similar ability, but maybe people who are better than them. But you're doing it for 90 seconds. It's not as if you're doing it for half an hour, which is when the challenge can maybe become demoralising. So time is also a good way of managing difference linked to how you might group and how you might pitch certain teams or opponents against one another. So there's a bit of waffle in there, but hopefully there's also some good managing difference tips in there.
[00:37:26,582] [Louise:] Yeah, I think that's great. So this part of the show is our community chat, where we get a question from one of our coaching community. So today's question, I'll have to read it out to you. This one's quite an interesting one. I have a team of under 10s next season and there is real mixed ability. Defensively, they are all really sound, but having lost our best player to the academy system this season, it's really clear how they relied on him to create and score the vast majority of the team's chances. I'm encouraging all to shoot and try something, but it's not really working at the moment. Some of them need to be a bit more greedy, but I'd appreciate some thoughts on how to get the team to try more in front of the goal. What's your thoughts on that? It's quite a complex question.
[00:38:13,823] [Matt Jones:] Yeah, but it's real. That's what I like about that question. What I will just say real quick, and I can understand why the coaches use that terminology that they've lost that player to the academy system. I would say they've just helped that player get to the academy system and see this now as a wonderful opportunity because you could argue in a good way that managing difference now just got a little bit easier with that group of players because it sounds like, and this isn't a criticism of the coach, that they were reliant upon that player to score the goals. Remember, we're talking under 10s here, so we would still be encouraging coaches working with that age group under 10s foundation phase to make sure that we're not fixating players and pigeonholing them to certain positions. I'm not saying that's what that coach did, but just listening to the context. Other coaches might fall into that trap, i.e. put the best player up as a striker, why he's going to score all the goals, because it's about winning. Or remember, it's about development. I'm not saying kids don't like to win, but it's about learning the game. And in this case now, if you think about it, if you do pigeonhole players and you become self-reliant upon them and one moves on, you then realise that you've not prepared the other players to play different aspects of the game. But in answer to the specific question around encouraging them to shoot, it's... I love the word bravery. So it's just a little simple thing, but if you can give off messages, positive messages, around be brave, take a shot, back yourself, glasses half full, whatever it is, I think sometimes it's as much about your coaching behaviours and the messages that you're giving off as it is about the practices that you use, the reward systems that you might use. And it's difficult maybe to explain on a podcast, but I'll do my best. So if we're going to introduce a reward system into a game, think about your scoring system. A number of different goals are scored in and around the penalty box. So you might actually have a dead simple game where you say, if you score a goal from inside the penalty box, it's worth three. Because statistically, that's where most goals are scored, in and around the penalty box. Now, I know it's harder to get in and around the penalty box because you've usually got defenders and a goalkeeper stopping you. That's the beauty of the game. But to incentivise it, what do most kids want? One point or three points? They want to score three. And actually, you can then sell it as, well, you can get a hat-trick goal here. So it links to, right, I want you to be brave. Can you get a hat-trick goal? I'm going to give you that if you manage to get in and around the penalty box. It's one point from wherever else you score. So encourage them to get really close to goal. Then you might offer a double points goal. If you can set up a mate to score in the penalty area through pulling the ball back, again, statistically, a lot of goals are scored in football by getting the ball to the side of the box, penalty box, and it being pulled back, then it's worth double. So we talked a lot in the last few years around connect and combine. Yes, there are individual moments in a game of football, but it's also a team game. So we need players, even at the age of under 10, one to prioritise getting comfortable on the ball, master the ball, master their body, master the decisions that they're going to make, but also we need them to develop relationships. So go beyond 1 v 1, move into 2 v 2s and 3 v 3s. So again, you can incentivise by saying if you can set your mate up and score in the penalty box, it's worth six. If you set them up outside, it's worth two. Now your maths teacher's going to be happy because you've got some numeracy going on there. And if you also then want to create a temporary underload and overload in the shooting game, this is another tip that I've stolen off a coach. If you have on the sideline just a white board with a marker pen and a line down the middle and you've got, let's just say, Yellers v Blues or Norwich v Chelsea, so get the players to come up with the names. Again, give them some ownership. You'll then say, right, when you score a goal, you only get that number of points if you go and mark the number of points on the white board. So Jamie's on my team, Team Blue, he sets it to me in the penalty area, pulls it back, I shoot, score in the top bins. I can say that while I run a podcast and I'm making it up. I only get the points for my team if I run over to the white board and put either a number three or a tally of three. Now whilst that's happening, the team that's just conceded can start playing out from the back straight away. Now for the time it takes me to run over to the white board and put my three hard-earned points down and autograph it with my name, the other team have got a temporary overload. So let's say we were playing a 5 v 5 at that point. Actually the scenario there is we're playing a 5 v 4. But it's only going to be for what, eight or nine seconds? And then I'm going to be straight back on the pitch. Now that would encourage the team who's just conceded to get on the ball, be brave and counter-attack. Why? Because they've got one less player to play against. That's the decision they have to make. They might keep the ball and do a slow retain and build, progress and penetrate, which is playing forward gently. when a coach would say at the start of a session, we're going to work on shooting tonight, we're going to count of the number of opportunities I get to shoot in a game. But if you can count single digits, then you've not created enough opportunities for them to shoot. So look at your environment and go right, how many goals have I got or how many goals can I set up? Can I get the players working in small groups? So if you've got a group of ten, you might have five pairs. Pass, shoot to your mate, rotate. Pass, shoot, rotate. Low pressure to begin with, but you're only going to do it for five or six minutes. But you get the reputation up, you can groove in the technique, they can experiment different parts of the foot to finish with. They can have a go at dribbling out and shooting or they can set it to their mate and get a bounce back, whatever it is. Then you might turn it into a 1 v 1, so your mate becomes your opponent. Can you dribble 1 v 1, shoot and score? Then you might combine those groups and have a 2 v 2 and a 3 v 3. Even if you get 11 turn up, you might have a 3 versus 4. And again, go back to what we said earlier. The team with three might be the players who are more competent, so they're forging ahead. Whereas the team with four might be the ones striving to keep up. Why? Because they need an extra body, they need an extra player. So you can always make an odd number work. In fact, an odd number is great for managing difference. It's really good because you've got a reason to put more players on a team. But that's where you've got to get really clever about who I'm putting on which team. That comes back to knowing your players, what they're capable of and what they'll hopefully be capable of one day.
[00:45:10,468] [Louise:] It's a complex one, but I think there's some really good stuff in there that should help.
[00:45:14,468] [Jamie:] The complexity of the question doesn't surprise me because a lot of grassroots coaches, I'm not saying they're crying out of help at all, but go back to what we said earlier about they're faced with this daunting task of coaching alone as a volunteer. They've got all these challenges coming at them left, right and centre. All they want is some advice and some help. I'm not suggesting that everything I'm giving will be relevant to the context and or helpful. You might try some of my ideas and bin them off. All I'll say is don't bin them off until you've exhausted them a little bit because there's been times when I've tried ideas and it's not been the idea that's wrong. It's actually been my methodology and the way I've implemented it. I think the other thing, what we've learned from past episodes is where sometimes you just have to try it for a bit longer. It doesn't always happen the first time. When we've had other grassroots coaches on, they've tried it once and then come back and tried it again. Eventually, they start to see the impact. Yes, live and learn. Right, we're coming up to the end of the episode now and regular listeners will know that that means it is time for a Swift Session.
[00:46:20,468] [Matt Jones:] Yes, a Swift Session is another 30 second challenge. This time, we'll be asking you to come up with a session idea in 30 seconds. Are you ready for that?
[00:46:31,468] [Matt Jones:] Yes, born ready. Okay.
[00:46:34,468] [Jamie:] I'm expecting good things from this, no pressure. Born ready. Okay. I've set myself up for a form now, haven't I?
[00:46:42,468] [Matt Jones:] Okay, set the timer up and your time starts now. This game is entitled Empty the Net and there's a clue in the title. It's a classic game. You can play two, three, four, five a side, maybe even odd numbers on either side, but a classic game between two teams and the idea is to empty the net. There's five balls in the game, one ball in play at any one time. When one team scores, the game restarts by taking a ball out of your net and trying to score. You can play against the clock or empty your net.
[00:47:14,468] [Louise:] Very well done. Love that. Great idea. That's a really good idea. Well, thank you very much for that, Matt. It's been brilliant listening to your insight, plenty of experiences as well that hopefully
[00:47:23,468] [Matt Jones:] We've passed on quite a lot of top tips to our coaches listening. Yeah, and if I had to sign off with a message, and this is designed to make you smile, and he's no relation, but I'm going to quote Indiana Jones, but in one of his films, there's a clip whereby in classic Indiana Jones style, he's trawling through the library on the back of a motorbike, he falls off and some college student decides to ask Indiana Jones a question because he's obviously a lecturer at the college, so he asks him this question, then Indiana Jones looks at this student who's got his head buried in the book and he says to the student, great question, but if I can give you one bit of good advice, if you're going to be a good archaeologist, then you need to get out of the classroom. I think that's a great bit of advice that I would transfer over to the football coaching world, which is if you're going to be a good football coach, by all means, go online, go on a course, but when push comes to shove, put on a pair of boots, grab a rack of cones, set of bibs, bag of balls, go out there and just have a go at coaching. As I mentioned earlier, it's hard sometimes coaching, but not impossible, and it's extremely rewarding when you impart some knowledge and wisdom to help other players, or indeed my world, help other coaches fall in love with the game.
[00:48:36,468] [Jamie:] Great advice there, thank you very much. Plenty of things to take away from that chat, but what was the one key thing for you Louise that Matt said?
[00:48:45,468] [Louise:] I found really insightful when he was chatting about communication, the bit where he was saying about pausing and waiting for someone to finish speaking instead of jumping straight in with an answer, I think that's a really good and useful tip to use, just let them finish, because they may say something else or it might help you to formulate your answer. Yeah, that's a good one. For me, the observation and engagement really, where you're looking at what players can do and catching them doing something well, and making sure they know that you've noticed it, so giving them a little bit of praise, and that will effectively encourage them to come back or to keep trying, I quite like that and I think that's quite a good piece of advice for all coaches to take really. Yeah, definitely.
[00:49:28,468] [Jamie:] Right, well that's all we have time for today, but don't forget to check out the episode description for all the links to our platforms. There you will be able to click through to the England Football Community. This is where you can post your coaching questions for us to discuss on the podcast or just simply to connect with loads of wonderful coaches.