Make this grassroots season your best yet!

As coaches, volunteers, officials and parents we will all be gearing up for the new season in grassroots football. Along the way there will be thrills, tears, highs, lows and most certainly rain. But we don’t ever regret it, do we?

I thought I would share some of the ways I hope we can make this year the best yet.

 Started on a positive note with the parents

Ask a coach or volunteer in children’s football about what pains them most during the season and quite often the response will be “parents”! But it doesn’t have to be that way. Reinforce the expected standards of behaviour and club values with a pre-season meeting. This can simply be after a training session, before the first game or at an organised event but doing this gives a clear and honest communication with the parents of the children at your club. And if you do have the parent who ‘knows the game’ or is living their dreams through their offspring, then the likelihood is that when they see the expectations you hold for them, they won’t stick around for too long.

     Create a safe and pressure free environment for the kids

Only when your players feel absolutely comfortable can you see their potential unfurl in front of you. Ever had the child who is fantastic in training who fails to produce come the match day. It is quite possible that they are feeling under pressure. Do you have a ‘win at all costs’ philosophy? Is there a rivalry between the two teams even before kick off? Are the sets of parents rowdy and expectant? Create a safe environment by reminding the children they are here to enjoy themselves and learn, encourage pre-match handshakes, install a respect barrier!

      Have you download the Kick It Out app?

This can lead on from my last point. Have you ever been at a game where you have seen an incident, involving a form of discrimination, that is simply unacceptable but you do not know whether to take action, or how to? As a player previously, in particular, and as a coach now I have experienced that feeling. These can appear at games or training sessions, and can be quite overt or come in more subtle forms. If you have not seen it already, the Kick it Out app has a report function, where you can make a complaint in a very concise and simple way. It also has the option to evidence your complaint with a photo or video attachment. Importantly, you can have complete confidentiality. The app covers ninety five percent of smartphones, so what is to lose by downloading the application? Discrimination is still rife in the game of football and we can help set an example in grassroots football that it will not be tolerated.

     Listen to the children!

Empowering and giving ownership can be a great way to inspire confidence from your players. And what’s more, you might learn something along the way! As Club Welfare Officer at a grassroots club in London, this year I decided to work with the younger teams to devise a new code of conduct. A lot of what they talked about was in fact already in the previous documents, but there were some valuable insights which we will be implementing into the new codes of conducts. It has also showed that we value their opinions and that we trust them to help with making such key decisions.

     Be the best you can be for your players

Nearly all coaches within grassroots football are volunteers, and have full time jobs they have to focus on. I can appreciate that, having been there myself as well as studying. That said, we should still strive to be the best version of ourselves when coaching or volunteering. Attending courses organised and take place through the Football Association can be fantastic for learning (particularly the Youth Modules, which I advise any coach to enrol on to) but are quite costly and difficult to find places on. Simply preparing and evaluating can help your children make the most of training and matches.

     

     

We can't all be like Jose

     Stay off the pitch!

Okay, so this is just a bug bear of mine and even I have found myself stood a couple of yards on the pitch and asked “what am I doing?” To me, coaches who constantly stand on the pitch are not making any positive difference whatsoever. It can be intimidating (for your players, the opposition and the official), it shows a lack of self-control and quite simply, you might get in the way! Taking a few steps backwards will not harm your view, in fact it may improve it.

And those are just six of the ways that we can strive to keep improving the state of grassroots football. There are even more, that I'm sure you have in mind, to add to the great job those involved are doing year in year out.