5 WAYS TO TELL IF YOUR LOCAL COACH IS A GOOD COACH?

Your local club is where the majority of your footballing development happens. It’s where you learn to kick, kick your first goal, play your first game and really develop as a footballer and person.

Your main learning resource during these years is likely your parents but when at the footy club it’ll be your coach.

Local footy clubs are often the lifeblood of the local community and are fortunate enough to always have fantastic volunteers, parents and community members who put up their hand to run water, be the runner, goal umpire and even the senior coach.

This is great and without them we wouldn’t have local footy.

But often times your local footy coach is not the best thing for your development, if you aren’t a naturally gifted athlete or footballer your local coach is critical to you getting to the next level.

And if they aren’t capable of giving you tangible and constructive feedback and tips on how to improve your game and get to the next level, you may (as harsh as it sounds) be doing yourself a disservice by staying at that club.

How do you know if your local coach isn’t giving you what you need to get to the next level with your footy?

Here are 5 tell tale signs your local coach doesn’t really know what they’re doing.

1) Their Pre-game speech sounds like an Arnold Schwarzenegger motivation video (We hate this mob, We need a 4 quarter effort today etc.)

2) If you ask for individual feedback they give generic advice or even just tell you you’re doing great with no advice at all

3) They have no strategy or structure in place, Their game plan consists of being “Harder for longer”

4) Training sessions go a bit like this- lap of the oval, static stretching, lane work, 5-star handball and then match sim

5) They don’t know the path to the next level and certainly don’t have connections to Talent league, VFL, SANFL, WAFL clubs etc.

With all this being said, we love these coaches and for the large portion of players in the team who have no real interest in getting to the next level, these coaches are great! And again local footy wouldn’t survive without these (often times) volunteers.

But if you do want to play Talent League or state league footy and you haven’t been blessed with being naturally the best player in your league then you need more from your local coach and if they can’t give that to you, the harsh reality is you may need move clubs or risk falling behind.

To find new clubs and give yourself the best chance of making Talent League or State League footy create a profile here