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[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 Pete Augustine, an FA coach development officer, to discover his journey so far and to get his insight into how to coach 15 to 19-year-olds. Well, hi Pete, welcome to the show. How are you?
[Pete]
Hi Jamie, I'm good. I'm very well.
[Louise]
Really great to have you with us today we're gonna make a start by finding out a bit about your role can you tell us what it is that you do
[Pete]
yeah I'm a coach development officer and my region is London in the southeast of England and I have a focus on diversity and inclusion so going into communities and working with their coaches trying to help them to navigate the coaching pathway if you like but not only that but also to tell them about opportunities for attending CPD events and also linking with each other to make life a little bit easier because it can be quite hard for groups who are working in some communities where they don't actually know how the FA works so our job is to try and help them with that and so it's really rewarding. Sometimes it can be quite tough because you're working on demand and so it's a great role I must admit I really really enjoy it.
[Louise]
And it's a really important role so...
[Pete]
Yeah I think so yeah I think we talk about diversity and the fact that diversifying the game but it's the inclusion part which is the most important you know making people feel that they are part of the game that they're not excluded and that's everybody so I work with many black and Asian coaches at the moment, but you know, I can go into a community and there's people from the former Soviet bloc, there's people from Australia, New Zealand, and they're all trying to navigate the pathway as well. You know, if we can make the coaching landscape much more inclusive, then we won't have some of the divisions that we have, not only in the game, but probably in the world, because I think football is a great conduit for that.
[Louise]
Definitely.
[Jamie]
Brilliant. Well, fantastic. Thanks for that, Pete. Really insightful piece of insight into your role and your life with the FA. Before we kind of discover more of that and discover more of your experiences, as this is a coaching podcast we like to give our listeners some great coaching tips and advice at the top of the show.
[Louise]
Yep so we'll call this your arrival activity. Loosen you up,
[Jamie]
get you
[Louise]
in the zone. I hope
[Pete]
I've got something.
[Louise]
So what we're going to do is we're going to ask you to give us as many top coaching tips as you can in 30 seconds. Are you up for the challenge?
[Pete]
I'm up for the challenge.
[Louise]
Good. We've got some timer music. So when the music begins, that's when you can start.
[Pete]
Okay. So first thing is make sure that whatever you do, it's going to be fun. Understand your players. Make sure that you're well prepared and that you know what you're going to deliver. Know what you're going to be going after so what are the players going to be better at by the end of the session. Make sure that even if you make a mistake, don't worry about it. Because the only person who knows you've made a mistake is you.
[Louise]
I thought you were going to say one more top tip. Is there another one you want to add
[Pete]
in? Just make sure that it's really important that you're friendly to your players because no matter what the players have got to like you.
[Louise]
Perfect, they have great tips.
[Jamie]
Yeah loads of great tips there, well done. Well we'll move on to the section that's kind of all about you Pete and finding out a little bit more about your experiences and we always start this section of the show by asking what was your first experience of football like?
[Pete]
My very very first experience I can remember I must have been only about four or five and I lived in a house with another family and they lived upstairs from us and they were two older girls and I remember them, I don't even remember how I remember this, I remember them throwing a ball to me and it got me to just kick it back at them and every time I kicked it back at them they cheered and I must have thought this is really good, I'm going to keep doing this and then I kind of I suppose like most young kids I don't remember much after that but I remember around about eight years old I started to play football in a local team and I don't even know how that came about. It was a guy who lived next door to us. I lived in an area called Stonebridge in North West London and he knocked on our door and asked my dad if I wanted to play football and just looked at me and go do you want to and I went yeah okay so he'd come and pick up all the kids take us to football and in those days it was you know you played 11 v 11 football on a massive pitch so I just go every week and it's how it started really and I fell in love with the game from there.
[Louise]
Sounds like a really fun initial start with the kicking to the girls but also just sounds like it was a fun place to be.
[Pete]
It was yeah I mean again as a kid you know you don't understand much you just know when you're having fun and that was that was my first my first experience of actually just kicking a ball yeah no coaches.
[Jamie]
So the importance of play in that message as well isn't there like no coaches it's just literally just doing what you want imaginative players or just just playing with friends really isn't it?
[Pete]
That's right yeah.
[Jamie]
Do you want to give us a little bit of insight into when your interest in coaching potentially started then?
[Pete]
Yeah and again it started really young so I was and people won't believe this but who know me that I once won a prize a reading and writing prize at school for creative writing. I don't know what's happened to me since but I won this prize and the prize was some book vouchers and so the one thing I wanted to do is know how to be a better footballer so I went out and bought a book, a coaching book, by a gentleman, a German gentleman by the name of Gerhard Bauer, I still remember his name and I read this book from cover to cover, you know, learning how to strike the ball, how to strike the ball with curve, how to control it, all that stuff. And I just kept reading and reading and reading. And that was when I think about it, that was probably where my love of coaching came from, because I really wanted to know about the game. I wanted to know about how I got better. So the first person I actually coached was myself. From there, I just kind of just kept practicing and just practice in the garden and that sort of stuff and and then what I realised is I wanted to know about things like how do you play in this formation how do you play in that formation so yeah so it was kind of that's what really got me interested in in those early years was you know I wanted to I just wanted to understand the game.
[Louise]
And then I suppose taking you to your first experience of actually coaching others what was that experience like for you?
[Pete]
It felt really natural because I'd say my first proper experience was when I was coming to the end of my career and I remember thinking I've got all these players because one week I was playing in the team and the following week I was a coach so I reverted back to some of the coaches that I'd worked with who were very good so there was a couple of coaches who I really revered I thought they were they made the game fun not only fun but interesting they gave me tips proper coaching tips and so I kind of worked right back to what they taught and I kept thinking all the time when I was coaching well what does this look like in the game? If I'm going to do this practice, what does that look like? And so I kind of made up practices based on my thoughts about the game and how it was going to work. And we did quite well as a group. We managed to end up getting, I think, three promotions from the different leagues that we were in, in three years. So it was quite successful. And at that time I didn't have any coaching qualifications but luckily there was a couple of coaches that I had who actually did have coaching qualifications who actually knew about the game and actually helped me whilst I was playing.
[Louise]
And do you think that your playing experience that you've had in the past, do you think that influenced your coaching approach at all? I know you've said about kind of there was different coaches around you that helped but how about the playing side of it?
[Pete]
Yeah definitely I think as a coach sometimes on the when you're on the sidelines the game moves so quickly and you look at it and you go something's not quite right and then you think to yourself you go back to playing days what would I have done in that situation well I probably would have done this this or this and then you go okay I'm gonna make this change you're not quite sure why you've made the change but it's just a feel so I think having played I think that feel is important when you're a coach not saying that you can't have that if you haven't played but I think it's a bit of an advantage if you have played.
[Jamie]
What would you say you enjoy most about coaching?
[Pete]
I think it's just being with the players I think I just love being with the players I think you know trying to impart knowledge to them the process of coaching where you start out and the players don't understand something, then you get them to understand it. I think that's the bit that I really, really enjoy, spending time with players. I think that for me, I don't get to, when I'm coaching, I don't get enough time to spend with the players because if I could that's what I'd really love to do but it's just working with the players I think there's nothing better.
[Louise]
Can you give us a brief insight into what your journey was like from when you were first starting out to the role you have today just so we've got an idea.
[Pete]
Yeah, when I first started out, I didn't have any qualifications. So basically, I was working on instincts and information I had in the past, I then found out that you could take qualifications. I remember it was a gentleman by the name of Gordon Bartlett, who told me about coaching qualifications and how I could get onto them because I asked a lot of other people and nobody could tell me so and eventually so I went on to my level two because in those days you didn't have to start with a level one if you'd played so I went along took my level two realised how little I knew about the game from that course. And it was a gentleman by the name of Tony Linton, who was the coach developer. And what was interesting about Tony was that he was a black coach developer, first one I'd ever seen. And I thought I would see loads more black coach developers and I didn't after Tony. So, you know, he was he was a bit of a pioneer for somebody like myself. And then I went on from there and took my UA for B because I'd moved from Middlesex to Surrey and managed to get on a course there and then onto my A licence, FA Youth Awards, did all the youth awards and then eventually the AYA. So for me, my journey was, it was very long. So I've kind of potted it and made it sound like, you know, I went from one to the other to the other. It wasn't like that at all. You know, in between each qualification, I took almost two years to be assessed and that was because I went away and tried to learn about the game because I realised how little I knew and when I see coaches these days who are trying to rush from qualification to qualification I must admit it sometimes frustrates me because I know how much learning there is to do. The game isn't and the game changes and it's changing quicker and quicker and quicker every year we go on. So I think it's really important that coaches enjoy the journey. I've enjoyed my journey. Some of it wasn't very good but some of it was really really good.
[Louise]
I guess it's that thing of processing the information it's not just kind of getting one taking it off because actually putting into practice what you're learning and stuff like that is really important.
[Pete]
Yeah that's really really important because I went and when I work with my players some of the information that I that I gathered on the courses and then I put my own slant on it and that was where I really learned about how to be effective as a coach. That's really important. You've got to give yourself that time.
[Jamie]
Yeah, it's really important. Giving that time for development, being able to try out things, what you've learned and there's so many resources out there. I mean, these podcasts are on our website. We've got webinars, YouTube, check that out. There's lots of little bits of information that you can take in between parts of your journey and people's journeys do look different. It doesn't have to be qualification, next one, next one, next one. There's a lot of opportunities for for development we must stress that. Taking in everything you've learnt from your coaching experiences so far what advice would you give to your younger self to prepare them for stepping into the world of coaching for the first time?
[Pete]
Well if I could meet myself when I was coming to the end of my playing journey, I would have said go and get coaching qualifications. Now, whilst you're still playing, because it will make you a better player, number one, and number two, that's the direction you're going to go in. So I would have started a lot earlier. I started really late and I think I would have told my younger self to ask more questions of the coaches that you're with. That's what I would have done because those are the two things I think because I didn't understand as much as I should have done when I first started coaching and if I'd spoken to coaches I think I would have that would have held me in better stead knowing the why of what they were doing and what made them think about it.
[Jamie]
With you saying that like saying that you wish you'd asked your coaches the why, thinking about your coaching approach now do you provide the why to your players in terms of why you're doing things just thinking that if you're saying that you'd like to have known the why is it as a player to a coach do you do that to your players at all?
[Pete]
Oh yeah part of my journey was learning how to communicate with different people and different players and I remember when I worked at Chelsea's centre of excellence and Middlesex Girls' centre of excellence, one of the things that I found out was that when I was working with female players they always asked, well why are we doing this? Always, always, always. I'm not doing that and why aren't you doing it? Because you haven't told me why. And I used to get that a lot and coming out of the male game to start off with it frustrated me but what it made me realise is actually they do need to know why so that helped me I spent two three years working in that environment and explaining to players while we were doing stuff now it wasn't long explanations We're doing this because we know this about them. We're doing this because this is a really good way of getting past this opposition. And so what happens is the players development was much quicker because of that, because they know why. You don't have to say things like do you understand and they nod their heads and then they go off and it's quite clear they don't understand because with male players that's what happens nobody wants to put their hand up and say no I don't understand coach but if you explain it to them and you have different ways of explaining it to them then you have a much broader understanding from the players and leave that space for them so that they can come to you and ask when nobody else is around.
[Louise]
Yeah and I suppose it's kind of on the same theme you were saying that you didn't really ask why.
[Pete]
Do you
[Louise]
feel like you got some good advice from people and if you did get good advice what was the best piece that you got?
[Pete]
Getting personal advice from coaches was kind of as I was going through the journey was sometimes quite hard because they were busy doing this thing if you see what I mean they were either coach developers or should I say not coach developers but coach educators which I think there's a difference between the two and they would deliver the course tell you this is what you're gonna do and this is how you pass the course but when I went to CPD events that was when I started to find out about why you did stuff. So some of the nuggets I got were from Dick Bate, you know, seeing him work and the level of detail that he used to go into and he would tell you why and he would talk to you about different players who did certain things and you listen to that and you go, oh wow, but I didn't get that on the course. I got that on the CPD events that we went to around the country. Now I used to travel all over the place, you know, just to listen to people like Dick Bate, John Gittens, God rest their souls and coaches like that who could really impart knowledge on you. I used to go to down in Surrey, they still have a group called Surrey Coaches Association. So they used to get coaches to come in and you'd listen to those coaches and some of the stuff that they spoke about and their journeys and you know how they work with their teams and those things are really really really important because if you don't take yourself out of your own world how do you know what else is going on out there and that was it was more about watching coaches work more than somebody saying to me how you should do this. Definitely I think that informal learning is really key in a coach's journey and again it's one of my frustrations is that there should be more coaches on those events you know because it's so important really is.
[Jamie]
What do you think are the key attributes and skills that people need to be to become a transformational coach?
[Pete]
I think first of all you have to have a really open mind you can't look at something and say no I wouldn't do that. If you're gonna say you're not gonna do it understand why you're not gonna do it look at your style and think is that for me or not. I think the other thing is to be imaginative, experiment. I think being transformational is about trying stuff and not being frightened to get it wrong. And I think the third thing is to just enjoy coaching, really enjoy coaching, enjoy working with players because if all the time you're getting frustrated and shouting and all that sort of stuff, you're not enjoying coaching. What you're doing is you're expecting to impose something on people that some people aren't ready to have imposed upon themselves. So it's having that patience and that love of the game. That's how you become transformational.
[Jamie]
Kind of building on that as the focus today is working with 15 to 19s. Are there any other skills that coaches need to have to work effectively with this age group?
[Pete]
Yeah, I think the biggest one is empathy. If you have no empathy, you can't really work in that age group. The kids are going through changes, a lot, a lot of changes. And because they're going through those changes, you have to understand that their bodies are changing, the experiences they're having away from you, they're changing, their friendship groups are changing, because they might be changing schools or might be going to college or university or whatever. So those things are, that's really important. And understanding that I think players at that age are consistently inconsistent and so if you know that that's what you're going into it makes things so much easier. And the last thing really is don't assume anything.
[Louise]
Yeah that's a really good tip. Can you take us back to when you first worked with older teenagers and what that experience was like?
[Pete]
When I started to work with older teenagers, I kind of worked with different age groups. I started off working with adults and in those adult groups there were older teenagers in there like 19, 20, that sort of age, but not consistently. You know, we was a 16 to 19 programme. So you're working with them at those really formative years. And what we quickly became aware of is that their development was shaped by the type of practice that you delivered, the way you delivered it, and how you made them feel. Really, really important. I started off and I was very one-size-fits-all and we're gonna do this and you know if they're not doing what I'd set up I'll tell them I'll bark and bark holders. And after the first year I realised one my throat was sore every week and two that it wasn't helping it wasn't helping them it wasn't helping their behaviour it wasn't helping the way they learnt the game and what we I realised is that I had to give them lots of different opportunities to play and we did that so we had everything from where we trained, we trained in smaller groups, we introduced Futsal, we introduced a strength and conditioning coach which was a massive game changer for us. We broke the practices down to smaller units so that players could understand stuff and the other thing that we did which was even more important, we had fun. We had fun training. And that was, you know, that piece around fun, you know, age group, it's still critically important, because they're growing up, it's still got that moment where they're that child, but also they're trying to find their way in the adult world.
[Jamie]
You always learn in any walk of life. If you're having fun, you learn more. It's as simple as that really. Talking about learning, what did you learn from that experience and how has it kind of shaped your coaching approach moving forward?
[Pete]
I didn't always have to have all the answers we could find out things together and I think one of the things I also learned is that sometimes I had to be vulnerable as well I had to be approachable and I had to and I said use the word empathy earlier but I had to be empathetic I remember one of my players one day came up to me and this is when I realised I must have been doing something right. He came out and told me, he came out to me and he said, I want to tell you, you know, I've got something to tell you. And I said, yeah, yeah. What is it? And he said, oh, I'm gay. And I went, oh, okay. Okay. Anything else? What, what, aren't you going to say anything? I said, you're still the same person that you were two minutes ago I said you know do you still enjoy your football he said yeah so great so you know if I can help you in any way, I don't know if I can, but that's fine. If you don't want me to say anything, if you want me to tell the rest of the team, I said, no, no. He said, I haven't told anybody. I said, have you told your parents? And he went, no, you're the first person I've told. And that moment when he said that to me I realised oh my gosh we are much more than just football coaches here and that to me then I started to realise God we've got a real responsibility here with these young people so yeah so I mean there was other instances that happened you know young man got taken to court I then had to sit down and talk to him and talk to him about his life. That was again that piece there where you start to realise it's tough but if you're going to go into that age group you really have to understand what you're going into.
[Louise]
Yeah I guess it's people finding the way at that age aren't they and they'll make mistakes as any age group I suppose especially in that age group there's kind of things there to think about and be aware of if you're coaching.
[Jamie]
Yeah in particular not everybody kind of starts the coaching journey working with the younger players and it might be that they jump straight in to working with teenagers. So what would you say to them? What do they need to understand about this age group to be able to work with them effectively? What can they expect from working with 15 to 19s?
[Pete]
I think they've got to understand that they're still very young people and they don't know what you might think that they would know. So don't coach with assumption. Don't coach with the assumption this child is 16 so they should know this. They might not. It might be that they started their football journey at 11 but everybody else in their team started their journey at five. So there's all those years of experience that everybody else has got that they don't have. So it's tapping into that and finding out about the journey of your players. Where have they played? How much coaching have they had? Just by finding that out, that really, really helps you. And then you can start to tailor your coaching and your sessions to ensuring that the players get what they need out of it. So I've just recently started to use a lot of, and this, you know, I'll give Peter Sturgis his credit for this, working with smaller numbers, 3v3 little games, 4v4s, 5v5s at the most in training, which a lot of people would think, oh, well, you know, don't do that with that age. But it's really effective because, you know, if you start with a little three, four, before game, you're going to get loads and loads of touches of the ball. You start to see the players who can play, the players who are struggling a little bit, and you might be able to match them in some of the little practices. So you're going to play against that group, that group, then you challenge him and so on and so forth. But by doing that, and especially if you've got a coach who works with you, you can have some really effective practices by doing that. And I think it's having the, if you like, the bravery to try that and to do it I think is really important.
[Jamie]
It is a really important message there because you're right some people do tend to have almost like stereotype small sided games for being for younger kids it's not it's a great way to develop skill the more touches on the ball more repetition of a certain skill. So I do think that's an important message to be able to put out there that small sided games are for everybody. You might just adapt some of the rules maybe make them a little bit more advanced for some of the older age groups as you would do for the young kids but still a really really important thing to be able to use in practice design for sure. At this age group, you're kind of growing up into adulthood as you said, have you had any experiences in terms of like, at this age to kind of go through growth spells for instance and maybe see that players might need time to adapt to that for instance, have you had any experience of that at all?
[Pete]
Yeah loads, loads of experience. You're looking at a player and this player's like one of your top players, then all of a sudden they're going for a really difficult time. In fact it's almost the first thing that I'll go to is, are they going for a growth spurt? And so it's about time because nobody becomes a really bad player overnight so there must be a reason for it and growth spurts is one of the one of the big reasons because you see them they look a bit awkward they're kind of tripping over their feet for want of a better phrase and then what you do is you you give them that space and that's again that's a thing where working in small numbers that helps with that because I can get a little bit more time on the ball if they're struggling then you can sort of like give them some tips and and that sort of stuff because it's easier to do that in small numbers And it also gives you as a coach a bit more space and time because you can, you know, if you've got three or four games going on and you're the coach you're working with is working in one corner and you can say, well, I'm going to stay here, going to work with that player and that group of players and see how they're doing. And then you can start to talk to the player and so on and so forth. And sometimes it's about managing their minutes as well. So you might say, right, okay, I'll start you, but I'll bring you on next week and that sort of stuff. But being honest about that, because that's what I've done with players in the past when I know that they're going through that, I'll say, I think you're going for a growth spurt so I think what we're gonna do is we're gonna limit your minutes at the moment and then what we're gonna do is we're gonna give you some really specific stuff that we want you to try once you're on the pitch and that what that does is that gives them confidence and once they've got that confidence then the growth spurt piece becomes less of a problem for them.
[Jamie]
Do you have any top tips for kind of observationally for coaches to be able to spot things like growth spurts for instance or just just thinking this might be the reason it might not be come straight to a coach said it hardly you know they're struggling with the touch a little bit there or as you said with the phrase like tripping up over themselves a little bit might not be the first thing that comes to a coach's mind. So is there any like top tips or any key things that you think coaches should observe when working with teenagers, for instance, to try and understand them more?
[Pete]
Yeah, just first of all, know your players, you know, talk to them, you know, what's going on in their world. That's the first thing. The second thing is if you know your players and as I said if the player has been one of your top performers or quite good at certain things and they stop being good at that. It won't be because they're all of us, oh, they're just a rubbish player now. It's not that. It's got to be something. So it might not be the growth spurt, but you look at it first and you start dealing with that bit first because that's the bit you can control. Can't control anything else, you can control that. So look at that first and watch how they are in the game. Do they look confident? Are they struggling now? Are they, do they seem a little bit down? Those kind of things I'd be looking for. So looking at their behaviours, how's their behaviour changing? Because that growth spurt will also come with hormonal changes, so that's the other thing as well you've got to be aware of because those are the things you know, you might even talk to their parents, you know say you know how is he or she when they're at home and they can maybe give you a little bit of insight.
[Louise]
With all that in mind, how can coaches provide the right kind of environment for 15 to 19 year olds?
[Pete]
First of all, the environment's just got to be fun. It's number one. It's got to be an environment of learning and it's got to be an environment where they want to come to every week and how that's painted is about starts with you as the coach that you care about them you show that you care about them, have you been, you know what's happening, you might even make some silly comments you know we do this we play music in the changing room I'll come and I'll start dancing and I'll do a bit of dad dancing and they find that hilarious because it makes them see that you're a human so that I think that's really important to show that side of yourself that you've got a little bit of fun I think that's quite easy I think I think environment is although it's difficult but it's quite easy still.
[Louise]
Do you feel like you have to be quite stern on any particular things or like have particular rules or things like that or does it feel like it's not the right place for that age group?
[Pete]
I think there are some things that you should put in place I mean little things that will help them in life. So being on time. And I mean, it's a really basic one, but being on time is really, really important. So that's something that I've always said, right. Okay. If you're on time, that's part of what you've got to do. Things like we provide tracksuits, wear your tracksuit because that gives you a sense of identity and be respectful to each other. I always say to kids, if somebody's talking, everybody listens. So not just when I'm talking, but when everybody else is talking. So those are the things that I would put in place first. That's your building blocks. Then after that, it can be anything, you know, once you've got that, that respect, I think it's respect for everyone, so if a player wants to ask a question I shut up and I listen to the player and then I might ask the other players well what do you think and then we have that kind of discussion.
[Louise]
So it shows everybody's got an importance in there and it values everybody equally.
[Pete]
Yes definitely.
[Louise]
And how do you keep teenagers engaged in your sessions?
[Pete]
I manage to keep them engaged I think mainly because I have this idea is right okay is this going to be a fun session and how is it going to be fun so how am I going to include everybody in the session so if I look at the session my session plan and I go actually I've got players on the outside they could be standing around for a little bit too long so how do I make sure that that doesn't happen? I gear everything towards the game it's got to be a game if it doesn't look like a game players are not engaged I'm not a big fan of pattern practices I'm not saying they don't have their place they do but for me for that age group I don't think they're great I think they want to play the game and whenever I've tried the pattern practices with that group I just lose them so I think okay let's play something that looks like a game.
[Jamie]
Do you have any advice to help coaches to connect with players in this age group at all?
[Pete]
Just be yourself, be a nice person, it's really that simple because they're people too, we're people as coaches, we wear a jacket and it says coach on the back but we're people just be a decent person I think that's and that helps you connect.
[Jamie]
Brilliant we've kind of alluded to this a little bit earlier that off the pitch it can be a bit of a stressful time for players in this age group whether it be going through growth spells they need time to adapt but also kind of things off the pitch as well in terms of like just thinking back to being in that age group you've got exams potentially making the decision of higher education or obviously going into a job So older players in this age group may have already gone through this and even like trying to find the feet and making new friends wherever they've taken their path. So there is potential for a lot of change in their lives at this point. So in your experience, have you seen all of this affect players? And if so, what did you do to help them with it?
[Pete]
Yeah you see all the time because I spent a lot of time in that age group what you have to do is you have to give them space so that space so that they can one if they want to talk to you they can talk to you if they don't want to talk to you they don't talk to you they often do want to come and talk to you because they feel that there are other people who are too close to them that they can't talk to so you're almost that person who's on the outside who's who's not really going to make a judgment on them and they're not going to see them every day so that's really important I think it's also important to remember that you're a football coach, you're not a psychologist, you're not a member of the Samaritans, but you are somebody that they can talk to. So that's why you showing sometimes a little bit of vulnerability is also important. And also that they feel that you're not going to make a judgment on them and that's really important especially as they're going through those years because you're not really going to have the answers you might have an idea that you think would help but you don't know you don't know their world you don't know you know what their parents are like you don't know what their uncles and aunts are like, so you know just giving them that space to feel that they can come and talk to you.
[Louise]
I guess it's something where you could just make yourself aware of some other people you could signpost them to if like other organisations, if it's something you don't feel like you can answer at the time or they might need extra help that might be quite useful as well.
[Pete]
Oh yeah, definitely, definitely.
[Louise]
And then in terms of, it sounds like communications are really important part of that, do you have any tips on kind of helping them develop their communication skills so they can talk to you or communication skills for talking to teenagers yourself?
[Pete]
Yeah I think again as you go through your coaching journey you start to find out what your different coach, the different groups that you coach are different. So how you communicate with a group of young players in Leafy Surrey will be different to how you might communicate with a group of kids who are in the middle of central London. So it's finding that balance of how you communicate. You cannot communicate with everybody in the same way. So it's finding that out first of all that's what we spoke about earlier about getting to know your players I would say that's the one thing that I would always say just get to know your players and then give them the space in which they can talk so it might be that you might have yeah I don't know if you're able to do it you know like a little team night out go for a pizza or whatever it is, or have something in the clubhouse where you have, I mean, I was at an event the other day and it was a coaches event at a club in South West London and we were getting some young players in and some of the players had got there early. So we were doing the coaching event and we had the guy who's running the whole thing said to the kids you can come into the class you can listen to what the coach is saying and then we started talking about it and then I asked the question and one of the kids put their hands up and normally you might think well like coaches don't talk to their kid. So I went, what do you think? And the kids start to explain. And I just said to the coaches, there you go. That's what your kids think. You know, it was brilliant. It was a real great opportunity to hear for the coaches to hear what the kids think. And they loved it. Then they all of a sudden this I couldn't shut them up after that. But they were given the space to talk and I think that's really important.
[Louise]
And do you think so when they're playing but also kind of so that they can open up to you or whatever. Have you ever had an experience where you need to help someone be able to communicate a bit better at that age or bring them out of themselves at all? Or is it just about getting to know them as individuals?
[Pete]
It really is about getting to know them as individuals. I don't force players to want to talk. Some players are just quiet. They don't need to talk to you all the time. They're in their own head and that's a good place for them. And as long as you respect that, and that's fine. The ones who want to talk will talk. The ones who don't want to talk won't talk. But when they do want to talk, just be ready to listen.
[Jamie]
Now, everybody wants to win matches, no matter what age they're at, but development and enjoyment are the main priorities. And while development is still important if you go on to play adult football, it does come with it like a bit more pressure maybe to get three points. So what can coaches do to help prep teenagers for that adjustment there?
[Pete]
That's really about teaching them how to win, but also how to cope with losing. And for me, it's about sometimes putting them in situations where you're gonna put a little bit of extra pressure on them so you might say to them right today we're going after the three points and we're going after three points and we're going to do this but you don't do that on match day you do that in training this is what we're going to be doing on Saturday or Sunday we're going to go after the three points and this is what we're going to do and this is what we know about the opposition and this is what we're going to do here and this we're going to do here then let's suppose say for example you do all that planning and you lose the game That's where your coaching skill comes in. You say, right, we did all this planning. Why did we lose? What was it? And then you just listen to what they have to say, because then what happens is they start to develop this idea of understanding that there are key things that you need to know about winning and losing and what are the differences where are the key points in the game that you may have lost it what are the reasons so if you start to understand and you start putting that together they start to put pieces in place they start to understand oh actually we're winning 1-0 here We don't need to keep going for the goal. We might just sit back a little bit and we might try and counter. It might be, well, actually, let's go after them because we know that there's another goal here and they see those things. So it's working on those kind of things, those off field things where you sit down, I mean, everybody now has a VO, you know, kids can see themselves playing. So that has a big impact on their learning as well. But if you're going to give a kid a VO, make sure that you know what they're looking for, you tell them I want you to look at this part of your game, I want you to look at when you don't have the ball, what do you see when you don't have the ball, so now the kid has something to look at as opposed to just going oh look I did a really great step over there, oh
[Louise]
I sold him a yeah, or skilled him up
[Pete]
or whatever it is, all those sort of things. Kind of be a bit more specific if you're going to use it. If you're going to use video analysis, know why you're using it. Otherwise it's a waste of time, I think anyway. But if you know why you're using it, it's really important. And those aren't some of the other things about winning, learning to win and developing if they understand because that's what they're going to go into because in there when they play adult football somebody will give them a clip and say look at your game but they may not give them the information that they need to make that clip successful for them.
[Jamie]
Building on the back of that, actually, while we're talking about adult football, while they're not adults at this age range, you know, but some may actually be playing in an open age team. So coaches may find that they are working with both teenagers and adults at the same time. What implications does this bring? And kind of from a safeguarding perspective, how does that impact coaches and their way of thinking?
[Pete]
This is something I've thought about quite a lot. We're getting younger and younger players coming into the adult game because the adult game is becoming a game for young people because everybody's looking for that next talent so we look at people like Jude Bellingham and Marcus Rashford when they're brothers and seen Wayne Rooney those types of players so it's really important to remember that they are if you're coaching an adult team that young person in your dressing room is still a child and they're still developing and they're still trying to find their way. Now what they're also trying to do is trying to fit in into that adult dressing room and that can be quite hard for a young person when they've got all these adults around them and who are telling stories about what they did on their nights out and so on and so forth and feeling they have to join in to be accepted as part of the group. So as a coach, what your job is to do is to try and find a safe space for that young person in that adult dressing room and also to educate the other players in the dressing room about the fact that you've got younger people in there. Now, we all know that in adult dressing rooms, the language can become a bit fruity. But, you know, that's just the way of the world. You know, you can't protect kids from that. And probably some of their language is a bit fruity as well. But it's some of the behaviours that you have to protect them from. So to stop them going down wrong paths. So it's knowing, again, knowing the players in the dressing room, who are the ones who are likely to give bad advice to those young people, and making sure that you almost like buddy them up with a good egg in the changing room. And I think that's really important. And I think, you know, when I hear sometimes some managers, especially sort of like that non league level and they'll you know criticise a young player you know when they've had a bad game or they've dropped them they don't realise that that has a really profound effect on a young person, especially as they're coming through that journey and they've made it into the first team and they're 19. I remember that happened to me when I was, you know, I thought 19 and playing in the first team. Oh, great, fantastic. You know, you're playing in front of crowds and all that sort of stuff and then the following week I'm dropped. Nobody says anything. I know I had a good game, but why have I dropped? The other guy over there, he had a terrible game, but he's still playing. You know, explaining that to players I think is really crucially important.
[Louise]
Yeah, just awareness of what environment they're coming into is really important. So overall what top tips do you have to help coaches make a positive impact on their players journey?
[Pete]
Be open and honest, be resilient with your methods of developing the players. So if you really do believe in development, carry on with that, don't worry about the results, be empathetic. That's so important, be really empathetic and leave spaces for the players to be able to communicate with you and each other.
[Louise]
To our coaches for coaches who are working for 15 to 19 year olds? Yes. Okay.
[Pete]
Here is your challenge. The next coaching session that you do, can you write down what you want the players to be better at by the end of the session and then ask the players what they think they're better at at the end.
[Louise]
Okay, so do you tell them that before? Do you tell the players?
[Pete]
You don't tell them. Okay. You can't tell them. It's got to come out in your practice. So you've got to really design your practice to make sure that that comes out.
[Louise]
Sounds like a good one and we'll put a bit of a discussion up on the community and people can tell us what they've tried and how it went and kind of discuss it with each other that'd be really good.
[Pete]
I remember coaches you can't tell them.
[Jamie]
Those are the rules, Peter's set them, that is your challenge. Brilliant. Well, we are coming up to the end of the show now, but that does mean it is time for our swift session feature.
[Louise]
Yes. So we've got another final challenge for you to wrap everything up. Another 30 seconds.
[Jamie]
This time
[Louise]
we're going to ask you to explain to us a session idea in those 30 seconds.
[Jamie]
Wow. It is tricky.
[Pete]
Do you think I'll be able to do it because I've been a bit winded on.
[Jamie]
We believe in you Pete. We believe in you.
[Louise]
So yeah, are you up for that challenge?
[Pete]
I'm up for that challenge.
[Louise]
Okay let's see how we go. So again we've got some music for this and there'll be a whistle at the end to let you know when your time's up. Okay.
[Pete]
Okay here's the practice. What you do is you get your pitch put it into a diamond have a goal at each end and in each end of the of the of that pitch you've got three defenders three attackers the aim of the practice is to score as many goals as you can. If you want to, you can have players in each corner who you can use as bounce players and those bounce players can also score if they see the opportunity.
[Louise]
Wow, That was perfect. Is there anything else you want to add to it now that the time has finished?
[Pete]
No, I have to go home and draw that up now. Because if it doesn't work people say, oh Pete that was rubbish man, I don't like Coachcasts, you were rubbish.
[Louise]
I'm sure they wouldn't and I think it's been a really good conversation with you today so that's been great.
[Jamie]
Yeah thank you very much for your time today Pete, it has been really fascinating listening to you and we could extend this by another hour or another two just to be delving into even more detail working in with teenagers. This is just very much a bit of an introduction and just a few ideas to help people working with this age group. Thank you very much for your time. Thanks for sharing your story and your coaching advice. Hopefully you've enjoyed it as much as we have.
[Pete]
No, I had an absolutely fantastic time. Thank you very much for inviting me and I hope you invite me back some other time.
[Jamie]
Absolutely. Absolutely. I've got
[Pete]
to hold you to that.
[Jamie]
We will. You spoke very, very well and you really have today so thank you very much.
[Pete]
Thank you very much.
[Jamie]
Well a fascinating insight with Pete there Louise. What would be your key takeaway?
[Louise]
Well there's so many really good points that you made and really interesting to listen to Pete talk but one of the things that kind of stuck in my head was the working with teenagers as they're consistently inconsistent which is I guess just expecting all things to change when you're working with that age group.
[Jamie]
Yeah and I think building on to that I think my key point that I took away from it was having the empathy for that you know the fact that they are consistently inconsistent or you know they're going through potentially a lot of change in their lives or dealing with growth spurts you know just having that empathy and understanding as to why maybe they're taking little time to get used to things or if they need help with things just you know having that empathy there is so important with this age group. Right well that is all we have time for today but don't forget to check out the episode description for the transcription of this episode and for all the links to our platforms. There you'll 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.
[Louise]
Yep, we'd love to help you out with your coaching questions so please do check it out. We'll be back soon with another episode of Coachcast so if you haven't already hit subscribe to make sure you don't miss an episode. From all of us at England Football Learning, thanks for listening.