Quote ="Clearwing"I'll come clean here, I've no involvement with coaching whatsoever. As stated, my comments were opinion only and could well be incorrect. I gather you are a coach, so here's a couple of questions: is our apparent failure to produce decent halves in recent times a hangover from when drills/set patterns were in vogue?
Can we expect matters to improve under the mini game approach? If so, how long before the improvements become apparent?'"
I coached seriously (dabbled with a bit here and there) from 2007 until 2013, and have resisted the temptation to lose large amounts of time, so far, since arriving in SA
If I think about how coaching changed over the years, it's a lot. I'm 43, through school and my 20s, coaching consisted of little more than "run harder, tackle harder" with a little safety stuff in tackling, and the occasional "trick" of a team move or something. There was very little in individual technique. Lots of drills to practice skills, but it you had poor technique, you would just get better at that poor technique.
Since then, it's moved to real focus on individual skills, and learning those through mini games. Probably 2009 for it to get to me in Midlands RL. I remember hearing about how Spanish soccer made the change to training kids through lots of short sided, 3-7 a side mini games. We started coaching that way: technique instruction, mini-game to practice, break and question, mini-game, etc. It takes a long time to come through though to open age though. I was coaching U16s but it's almost too late by then. It's the ten year olds that matter, and so 12 years to come through. Remember though, our rivals are following the same approach.
