Coaches Corner
If you are a first-time coach or coming back for more, the resources on this page are here to help provide a safe, fun and football-first place for the club’s kids!
The Dinmore Bushrat’s align, where it makes sense, to the Football Federation Australia guides and set best practices to provide the best experience possible at the community club level.
At best we only have two hours with our teams each week, once at practice and once at the game. This often does not afford us much time to help kids develop their game – meaning that from practice to game time we have to be purposeful with each minute, maximising touches of the ball, after all football is a complex game and takes years to master.
A good way of visualising what
‘purposeful practice’ means is to
picture something ‘just beyond
the player’s reach’ or ‘just outside
someone’s comfort zone’, so there is
a challenge but not one that is too
difficult.
Football Federation Australia
One of the foundation concepts that the Football Federation provide is detail on recommended areas of focus for each age group.
is the framework that provides practical
guidelines for coaches working at all
levels of youth development
The FFA framework becomes relevant as each kid develops and grows from year to year, the graphic above shows the grouping of each age group and where the development should be focused, and as coaches, as our teams move up in ages we need to allow for different practice sessions and focuses during games – our skills need to match the age brackets!
Starting with 3 key questions for running the best practices sessions possible, ask yourself;
- What type of practices are best suited
for specific age groups and why? - How do I plan and design my
sessions? - What are the mental and physical
characteristics of players in the
various development stages?