Monthly Archives: March 2019

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.

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.

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.

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.