Coaching courses have become a great revenue stream for a number of sports in recent years.
While up-skilling coaches is a good thing, the problem comes down to the basic economics of supply and demand. Many nations and many sports now find that they have too many coaches and not enough teams for them to coach. This is why you cannot simply continue to run courses willy nilly, and hand out coaching badges at will.
We have seen this in Australia where many former players with coaching ambitions sat their Pro-Licence coaching licence, and the majority of these coaches are out of work.
There are only ten A-League clubs in Australia, and one in New Zealand. Only five of those head coach positions are currently held by Australian coaches, and another Australian holds the New Zealand position.
It makes far better reading in the W-League with eight of the nine clubs coached by Australians. The coach of Melbourne Victory, Jeff Hopkins is listed as Welsh, having played internationally for the land of his birth, but has been in Australia since 1999 and is regarded by many as a local.
There are of course technical director positions at the nine state bodies, and national roles but most who invest in the cost of a Pro Licence want to be coaching a team week-in-week-out.
So there are limited positions for an ambitious Australian coach to be able to test their skills.
What is going to be interesting is how many people continue to sign up for courses that give them a piece of paper and a badge, if there is no job at the end. Football and other sports are not like the boy scouts, the more badges you have does not make you the best coach.
It is worth looking at why coaching courses originated, and whether there is in fact a need for them today.
In the 1830’s coaching was identified at Oxford University as “a process used to transport people from where they are to where they want to be.” It was used as a slang term at the university for a tutor who helped a student through to an exam, that they subsequently hopefully passed.
It was first used in relation to sport in 1861. At that time there were no courses and no badges or pieces of paper. Coaching was seen as an informal relationship between two people. One of whom had more experience and expertise than the other, and offered advice and guidance, as well as sharing knowledge to assist the other in achieving sporting success.
For almost 100 years that was the way things worked in most sports. Ex players from various sports would take up coaching when they retired. Many because they loved the sport and wanted to stay involved. Some because they knew nothing else, and those who would coach any team at any level, because they wanted to share their knowledge and make the next generation better players.
Sir Walter Winterbottom who became England’s first Football team Manager was also the head of coaching at the English FA and he has been credited in football for being one of the first to implement a coaching standard.
Winterbottom was passionate about coaching. He created a national coaching scheme with summer residential courses at Lilleshall, Shropshire, and used persuasion to entice some of his international players to take the courses that he put in place which in turn led to them sitting exams for the FA preliminary and full coaching badges.
These badges however tended to be for those with ambitions to coach at professional and semi-professional level, or regional teams. The average club coach was usually a former player who just used what he had learned as a player in his new role.
Yet soon after these courses were under way coaching books started to appear. Sporting coaching books had been around since the 1800’s, but it was in the late 50’s 60’s, and 70’s that there were more and more specific coaching books on the shelves of book shops. Most of these were linked to a star of the day, and by today’s standards were very basic in their information.
As sport became more “professional” attitudes started to shift. Money was at stake, and in many sports the emphasis started to shift away from simply the prestige of winning, to the financial rewards of winning, and more worrying losing.
Many of the coaches were close friends and there are many tales of opposing coaches joining their opposite number in their office after a game for a cup of tea or something stronger before they left. Here the two would often analyse the game that had just taken place and share opinions.
In this era there was no internet. There was no Youtube, Skype, Zoom or Whats app. There was a pen and paper and a telephone. The latter could be expensive if you spent too long talking. So most Coaches would share information informally.
With this yearning for knowledge amongst coaches came the first coaching courses. These were held and operated more as a brainstorming session at the time. Coaches would come together and share ideas and formations and discuss why that style of play suited them.
What has been interesting is that during this period of isolation across the world many coaches in many sports have once again come together to share information, albeit remotely. We have witnessed top players going online and demonstrating how to execute certain skills. There has been an avalanche of information, and most of it has been free and most of it easily accessible.
If you attend a coaching course today – not the Pro or possibly A-Licence – is that course going to give you access to as much information? Are you going to be told or shown anything that you could not already find on the internet for free?
To be a coach there are a long list of values and virtues that are trotted out as being essential. We hear words such as visionary, passionate, creative, dedicated, committed, compassionate, etcetera. Similar words that are used in any field if the person wants to be successful. These are prerequisites to anyone wanting to achieve in any walk of life. Do they teach any of these values on a coaching course or are you simply told that you must possess them? The fact that you have paid your money and are actually there would immediately tick many of these words off the list.
The coaching courses of yesteryear were all about letting coaches know what they needed to know to be successful. Now all of that information is available online as well as still being available in books. Many of the top coaches who are passionate about improving the sport they love have shared that information for free.
As one coach revealed some of the coaching courses for lower level coaching spend a large amount of time on sports science. This is unnecessary unless the coaches attending are working with elite athletes.
Very few parents take their child to a club because they have heard that a coach is an expert in sports science. They initially want their children to play sport and have an experience that is enjoyable. To give a child that you need enthusiastic, positive, passionate and caring coaches. This is a skill in itself, and there are some youth coaches that are truly outstanding, and some who drive children away from the sport. It is vital that coaches remember that not every player they coach has aspirations to play professionally or for their country. Many want to play with their mates, to play a high standard, but enjoyment and that sense of belonging to a club, a community is far greater than a drive to excel at an elite level.
A coach is there to make players the best that they want to be. That is an important thing to remember. If that player is happy with the level they are playing, even if they have talent, it may be very hard to change their mind. There may be a less talented player, who has the drive and desire to be better, so the coach is there to help them become a better player and become the best that they can be.
Sport is littered with hugely talented players who could have gone on and played at a higher level, but simply did not want to. They may have lacked the motivation, they may have not wanted the commitment. Often they simply want to enjoy playing. They do not want the game to become a chore, a job which they may grow to hate.
There are many professional sports people in the last twenty years who when they have stopped playing have walked away completely from the game. You rarely see them watching a game, they don’t coach and have no involvement. When one player was asked why after playing their given sport at the top level for over ten years they no longer had any involvement, the answer was telling. ‘It was a job.’ They went on to explain that that part of their career was over and they had embarked on a new one. A fair point, how many of us change jobs yet still are actively involved in the last one?
Sport the world over has in the last two decades created ‘pathways.’ There are playing pathways and coaching pathways and both are formulaic. Both are one of the reasons that the viewing and participation figures of so many sports are on the decline.
Coaches are so wrapped up in formations, keeping possession, starving the opposition of the ball, and not conceding, that they have squeezed the life out of the game. Where are the moments of individual brilliance that fans pay to see. Nowadays you may have to wait three weeks or a month to witness one such moment. Players with flair frequently have that coached out of them today. They are told that there is no room for individual skill, it is all about the team. This form of coaching is killing the games that the coaches profess to love.
Name a player across any professional sport that while they are playing they look like they are having fun. That has interaction with opposition players of a light hearted nature. Bryan Habana, the Springbok winger is one of the few that always looked like he loved every moment on a rugby field, but he has been retired now for two years.
In years gone by there were the likes of Rodney Marsh, Stan Bowles, Frank Worthington and even George Best in football. All exceptionally gifted players, but all who enjoyed playing and were able to play with a smile on their face.
Cricket has had many a character walk out to entertain us, players that were larger than life, but again still managed to perform, have a smile on their face and enjoy themselves. Players such as Derek Randall, Doug Walters, Viv Richards, Ian Botham, Curtley Ambrose and from an early era the likes of Syd Barnes and Keith Miller. There have been a few in recent times, Andrew Flintoff and Shane Warne, but they are few and far between.
What have coaches to do with the characters playing sport? A great deal, they need to encourage that joie de vive amongst players while still enabling the player concerned to perform at their best, and do a job for the team. This is how and where a coach earns their keep. This is where coaching can save many sports. Will coaches learn that in a classroom on a coaching course?
Governing bodies have stipulated that the head coach must have certain qualifications to coach at certain levels, but do they? Why can’t a club make a decision just as Germany did on two occasions when they put Franz Beckenbauer and Rudi Voller in charge of their nation team?
Both former World Cup winning players had never coached at club level when given the role. They could not be titled Bundestrainer, due to a lack of coaching qualifications, so were titled Teamchef (Team Leader). Their assistant coaches were the ones who had the official coaching qualifications.
With so much information available online, will we see more ‘coaches’ or ‘team leaders’ emerge who have opted not to attend a coaching course? Can a sporting body really stop them taking control of a team without their approved qualifications? Surely just as an employer can opt whether they employ someone with a university degree or not, a sporting club can decide if they want to employ a coach with a coaching badge or not. It would make an interesting legal case.
Everyone has said that the sporting landscape is going to change and this may well be one area. After all there is so much information available now for a nominal fee or for free, why would people attend a course?
Hopefully those administering sport will realise that the way sport has been engineered in the past few decades, the way they have developed and delivered competitive sport is not working. So there has to be a change of what is acceptable and it has to be less regimented. As covered in podcast 76 New Zealand are already looking to make changes with less under age sides.
This period will hopefully be a time for reflection and a realisation that building a sport is all about growing effective and engaging sports experiences for players and fans alike.
