From the FA’s “England DNA: Playing your part” conference, I will be taking the focus on “social” skills, from their 4 Corners model.
In particular, I shall be encouraging my players to take five minutes before a game or practice to work together to devise field settings and strategies. If they don’t talk off the field, what chance is there that they will when they get on the field?
I spent last Sunday with a group of football coaches from the FA East region, finding out about the FA’s new initiative, “England’s DNA”.
With presentations and coaching demonstrations on “who we are”, “the future player”, “how we coach”, “how we play” and “how we support”, the day offered both theoretical and practical guidance as to how the FA expects its coaches to develop the Future Player – from grassroots to the international stage.
For all the fanfare around the “DNA”, perhaps most revealing was the statement, in an introductory video, that there was, in fact, no fixed model – as soon as a document is written, it goes out of date (or evolves, to maintain the biological metaphor).
What was offered was a framework, beyond the “4 corners” (see below) for the philosophical grounding of football coaching.
It sounds quite high-powered – in fact, it was practical and realistic, and there are definitely lessons to be learnt.
“[the coach] didn’t grow players by nurturing individual talents, he created a regime.”
“…coaches now are so controlling that they don’t allow players to go and express themselves…[young players] are not able to make decisions for themselves.”
“The coach should prepare the team, then let the captain get on with it.”
Recent quotes from England Test cricketers, all of them active over the last decade, all bemoaning the stifling impact of over-coaching.
Is there a problem with cricket coaching, especially at the elite level?
The Teesra 