As part of my personal development, I decided that attaining my level 2 certificate in football would provide the ideal opportunity to progress my own skills and to use them to ensure the group I have been working with over the previous year are given the best guidance available.
The initial meeting consisted of the course leader, who is an A-license qualified coach, conducting the session using myself and the other participants as his subjects. He felt that this method allowed us as coaches to experience the coaching process from another perspective. By running through the whole process, planning, delivery, and evaluation, I realised certain areas in my own style were lacking in depth, and could attribute to the fact that some skills explored during previous sessions had not been fully understood, and therefore reached.
One area that was made apparent during the training day was my poor structuring of drills. By assuming that the children understood certain elements of the game, I bypassed focussing primarily on their cognitive or associative motor knowledge of the technical aspect. My method moved straight onto the skill without covering the fundamentals. Reflecting on previous sessions I can make a distinct connection between advancing to this stage and the players finding difficulty implementing the learned skill into a game.
My planning for this session was focussing on ensuring the players fully grasped the concept of the drill and what was required of them. As I was working without the manager I felt it was an ideal chance to gain total control, and conduct the session at my own pace. One sentiment which I referred back to was what the coach suggested regarding developing players skills according to the need of the team. This insight was shared by McGeechan (2002) when he agreed that each session should have a definite purpose within the overall season plan. Working on this basis I decided upon concentrating on one theme during sessions and fully utilizing the skill until grasped. The theme I decided to work on was ‘finishing’ as during previous games and training sessions I had witnessed a poor return of goals:chances created. Many times the players had fallen into the habit of trying to score the perfect technical goal and missing the target, when poking the ball with a toe or knee would have sufficed.
I used much of the information given by my mentor regarding conducting the session, and broke the drill down into four parts. The first two were looking at technique, whereby simple instructions were that a pass to the forward was required by the feeder, and an accurate shot was required by the forward. This progressed to the feeder making a ‘wing-like’ run before delivering, and the strikers to communicate with each other as who was to receive the pass.
The focus on the basic technique of the players was to monitor how well they transfer this ability when forced to transfer it into a skilled movement. Shedden (1986) maintains that it is not possible to be skilled without a high level of technical excellence and knowledge of the game.
Further progression was required in the skill aspect whereby I asked the forwards to ensure they were aware of the goalkeeper’s position and in that instance to place the ball out of his reach. Also, for one of them to time his run as the second man supporting. This worked well in an unopposed drill. The final part of the progression was introducing a defender to oppose the threat posed by the attackers. Observing this section of the drill I saw a definite improvement in the skill worked on by most of the players. However, success in training is rarely representative of how a learned skill will fare when transferred into a game where players are facing opposition of unknown quantities. Schmidt (1991) defines skill learning in terms of relative permanency. The relative permanency principle means that performance should be observed on several occasions prior to considering the effectiveness of any coaching activity and/or athlete behaviour. Salmoni (1984) backed up this claim by stating that practice performance viewed in isolation is considered as a relatively poor indicator of permanency. This means that skill acquisition behaviour may not be predictive of skill retention behaviour, or of the ability to perform skill transfer. The author goes on to explain that the various factors that affect the development of retention and transfer behaviour are critical in an understanding of the skill learning process, and a major role of skill learning research has been to identify these key factors.
Concerning the session, I feel that by breaking the drill down and progressing it slowly was a far more effective approach than previously explored by myself. When planning in the future this technique will act as a framework and hopefully produce similar results of learning as this session brought about. However, as highlighted I will use a theme and drills that are new to the players as I feel they will find it more beneficial to experience unknown situations that will require the use of some previously learned technical movements.

McGeechan, I. (2002) in Jones, R., Armour, K., and Potrac, P. (2004) Sports Coaching Cultures, From Practice to Theory, Routledge, New York.

Salmoni, A.W., et al (1984). Knowledge of results and motor learning: a review and critical appraisal. Psychol. Bull., 95, 355-86.

Schmidt, R.A., Motor Learning and Performance: From Principles to Practice. Human Kinetics.

Shedden, J. quoted in Sharp, B. (1986) Acquiring Skill in Sport, Sports Dynamic, UK.