02/05/2019: Mini Marjoneers Placement

While we still had no luck finding a lead coach for the younger group, thankfully a student coming for a placement assessment was to lead. However, a randomly large increase in the number of children he had planned for meant I needed to take half of the children away to work with them on something different. Without anything planned, this was somewhat of an unnecessary challenge! Thankfully, Chris was able to take payments for the night which did make things a touch easier.

For the second session, again Gavin and I split the group into two, with the older group working on an increasingly difficult possession drill that was made appropriate for their age while I continued to work on ball skills with the younger group. The session looked much better being split into two and with more appropriate coaching for the different children involved. Certainly, what I covered in my session would have been much too simplistic for the strivers in the older group.

We also had two younger assistants helping out, one paying back the club for financing his FA Level 1 and the other to complete the volunteering hours for his Duke of Edinburgh award. While both were inexperienced and young to be involved in coaching, they were confident and keen to get involved, whether it be assisting the session or in refereeing the matches.

25/04/2019: Mini Marjoneers Placement

This week was the first week back after a several week break. Unfortunately, due to other commitments and the fact we had not found a coach for the younger group yet, we had to cancel the youngest group. With a full database of emails and an active social media presence, this was thankfully very easy to do.

The second group ran as smoothly as it had done previously, again with lots of focus on ball manipulation and skills. This week, we split Year 2 and Year 3 children up, with Gavin giving the older group a more challenging session, trying to focus more on possession to see how they would cope with it. I took the younger group, focusing more on 1v1’s and more ball manipulation in order to improve their confidence on the ball. Splitting the group was a great success, and meant we could put on a more ability appropriate session for each child.

04/04/2019: Mini Marjoneers Placement

This week was the final week of the term and so we decided we would spent a majority of the time doing a match based session, with coaching throughout. This involved 10 minutes of ball manipulation as usual followed by going straight into games.

The best part of this week was that the parent who had previously complained about the coaching paid special compliments to how it had ran this week, with another parent particularly pleased at how involved their son was getting when working with Gavin. It is certainly much nicer to hear positive feedback, which is no doubt harder to get hold of!

After the session, Chris and I had a chat about what we would like to do moving forward. Plans were made to find a new coach for the younger group, as well as that we would start to go outside onto the grass within the next couple months. This both to increase the amount of space available and to save the club money on facility hire. It was also agreed that we would look to find a more appropriate way of taking payments, as the current manual method is both fiddly and time consuming.

28/03/2019: Mini Marjoneers Placement

Unfortunately this week had its own problems, with Gavin unable to make the second session due to being stuck in traffic returning from work in Cornwall. Traffic issues all over the city meant that numbers were smaller than usual, so this was at least manageable. Instead of having two pitches in the later session, we decided to have slightly larger teams and do a three-team tournament on a full futsal court in order to mix up how we played matches.

As well as this, sadly Steve confirmed he would be unable to keep making the earlier session due to his work commitments. In the mean time I would lead the coaching for this group and the club would find someone new to employ who could run this session with my support. While this was a shame due to how he engaged with the children, some of the sessions put on for the numbers were a touch static and too much like line drills. 7 and 8 a side at this age is not a good number for matches either, with most children just chasing the ball. A coach the club could employ would be great as we can decide who we want based on what they are like as a coach, as well as getting them to coach in-line with the way we want future Marjons players to come through.

21/03/2019: Mini Marjoneers Placement

This week, Steve led on the youngest session while I was able to take payments and engage with parents. Gavin arrived for the second session, with Chris available for the first 10 minutes to take payments in order to save from the hassle of doing it at the end.

Unfortunately, at the end of the second session we did receive our first complaint from a parent. He felt that standards had slipped in the previous couple of weeks and that his son was not engaging in as much as he should do. Despite being completely unqualified, he listed a number of things that he would like to see in future, largely involving static line drills which would make it “less crazy” and mean we could “look at them more individually”.

Everything I have ever been taught in coaching has been to keep away from line drills. After all, I am still waiting for the first time a cone is going to move to force a player to make a decision! Whilst I have confidence in my ability to coach and Gavin to do so as well, receiving comments like this don’t help your ability to run the session in the right mindset. Gavin and I agreed that in future we would be louder and more vocal to see if this made a difference to what he thought.

14/03/2019: Mini Marjoneers Placement

This week was a difficult one for me personally, due to my Gran’s 90th birthday celebrations in Plympton. Trying to organise everything without being present was certainly a challenge. Thankfully, I was able to attend the first 20 minutes of the first session so as to take payments from parents there in order to save Steve from a job.

Chris was available in the second hour to take payments from the older group, since Gavin would almost certainly have found an excuse had I asked him to sort it. Chris was also able to help with matches in the second hour, and Gavin had brought his son Leon (who plays for Marjons U18’s) to help him in the first part with the ball manipulation and skills.

Even though 27 children across two hours was less than some weeks previously, there were still enough in attendance to mean that the club was making money from the programme which was a major plus, since we were losing money with the previous coaching company who ran what was a similar session to us.

07/03/2019: Mini Marjoneers Placement

This week, Chris was not available due to other commitments. Thankfully Steve was able to make the earlier session for the first time which took an enormous weight off my shoulders due to how much I felt I was struggling with the coaching of it. Gavin was available to help with the second half as well. Steve’s session ran very smoothly, with his enthusiasm for the session very much infectious. If nothing else, I felt after watching it that I would be more comfortable to take the session again in future if he was unavailable.

Taking payments worked fine for the first hour as I had the time to do it myself, however due to the fact that I was coaching the second hour there was a mad rush at the end that made it very difficult. Being handed money from all different directions with no idea on who was giving it to you was not the easiest thing to deal with! It was decided that in future, all money would ideally be collected during the sessions and never afterwards or in the gap between the two.

One idea that Jon raised following this session was looking into whether we could setup a form of online shop whereby parents had the option to buy Marjons kit for their child. This was something that we decided we would look into, as it would save the club time and money having to organise kit ourselves.

28/02/2019: Mini Marjoneers Placement

Today saw the first session back after a break from half term, which also meant it would be our first week taking payments. Thankfully, Chris was available this week to support with this whilst myself and Gavin led on the two sessions.

From the database we had I formulated two registers, one for the older and younger groups, for Chris to use. Accepting payments whilst the session was ongoing seemed to work quite well, even though doing it one-by-one each week may end up becoming rather fiddly. A first year student called Sam was also able to help with the first hour. The more people available to deal with the little ones, the better!

14/02/2019: Mini Marjoneers Placement

This week marked our last session before half term break, which would give us the opportunity to reflect on the programme so far. Thankfully, Gavin was available for the first session as well this week meaning we had the right number of coaches for both hours.

The session ran well, this week focusing mostly on match based activities as something more relaxed due to it being the final week of the term. It was agreed that in future, Steve Gocher, an U11’s coach at Marjons, would lead with the younger group when he was available to do so. This would be a great fit due to his enthusiasm working with the little ones.

07/02/2019: Mini Marjoneers Placement

This week saw the first of our early slot with the Marjoneers, available to children in Year 1 and younger. Previously I had received lots of requests asking if parents could bring parents from Foundation age, which we were unable to accommodate. However, with the new slot we opened it up to children in this age group.

I was able to lead on this age group due to Gavin not being able to arrive on time, but quickly realised how much more of a challenge it would be. It has been some time since I worked with children of that age and it is easy to forget how challenging it can be! It is vitally important that fun and enjoyment is one of the primary focuses, else the chance of real engagement is minimal.

As well as this, I spent a number of hours putting consent form details into our new database. As a result of doing this, I was able to send out emails to parents to keep them updated on the situation and what was happening. This meant that in future, session cancellations would be much easier to manage.