Part of keeping your Fa qualifications up to date and when joining the Fa licensed coaches club it is a requirement to keep licensed and a minimum of 3-5hrs is required to to this. (www.facc.thefa.com). My own coaching journey started as a apprentice (scholarship) at West Bromwich Albion Fc part of out apprenticeship we had to complete the Fa Prelim coaching course which is equivalent to an FA Level 2. This qualification took me 5 days in total and at the end of the 5 days you was told if you had passed or not. When when playing days come to an end I took the next step up which was the FA Full Badge or Fa Advanced coaching award which is equivalent to the UEFA 'A' License which was a 2 weeks course at lilishall and again at the end of the 2 weeks you had either passed or failed. If you had failed you had to do the 2 weeks again.
After some hard work I managed to pass my full badge and being around 25yrs old I was now fully qualified and top of the ladder with my qualifications. Now if you do the maths I was fully qualified with only doing roughly 3 weeks of qualifications and that was it no where else to go. You might think that was easy and yes 3 weeks was pretty easy in hindsight but it suddenly dawned on me at the age of 25yrs where am I going to go and learn now as there was no other qualifications to do. So I made up my mind to watch other coaches coaching whether this was Fa staff putting demonstrations on or coaches coaching at clubs. I had a thirst for knowledge and wanted to improve as a coach myself.
It took around another 5yrs for the UEFA 'A' License to come out and we all had to upgrade our full badge and it took another 5yrs before new and different qualifications to come out. I have a thirst for knowledge so I enrolled on as many as possible. I remember enrol long on the Fa Goalkeeping 'B' License having never ever played in goal I found myself sitting on a course with 4 ex England goalkeepers and someone asking me why the hell I was on the course as I've never played in goal. I told him more the reason for me to be there I was working at the time with a team in the Thai Premier League and we had no goalkeeper coach so it was down to me as head coach to also coach the team and train the goalkeeper. I passed the course with flying colours and enrolled the following year on the Fa Goalkeeping 'A' License.
As a player we talk about what players have in their tool box well I have tried to apply the same to myself as a coach so I armed myself with as much knowledge from Fitness, Sports Science, Psychology, Youth Development, tutoring, mentoring and management. Having continuously worked in the game I thought it was right that if I'm going to teach then I must continue to learn I haven't done this just to tick a box but to continue to improve as a coach.
When I look at the coaching matrix today it is such I great time to get into coaching I listen to coaches saying they are unsure which avenue to go down if you want my advice starting out it would simply be; FA Level 1 - FA Youth Module 1 - FA Goalkeeping Level 1 - FA Psychology Level 1. This will take you around 12 days to complete then once you have consolidated then move onto the next level with exactly the same qualifications. Now I hear coaches come up with all the excuses why they can't do this or that and I simply say if you enjoy learning and you are serous about your coaching then there won't be any excuses. I recently started putting all my CPD hours together and the coaches I had watched or listened to. I was astounded how many hours I had spent on my own personal development.
Jason Withe
Continuous Player Development (CPD) - What is it and why do it?