Research Summaries Research summary 32 Moving to Games Sense | Page 3

Moving to Game Sense – One Coach’s Story

A coach’s story
Chris is a coach of a high school Australian football
team. After hearing about Game Sense, he felt it was
a coaching approach that would be more appropriate
for the type of players he wanted to develop. To help
adapt his style, Chris approached a university researcher
who agreed to act as a consultative facilitator, someone
who would provide advice or help Chris talk through
an issue.

Other ways that Chris’s story was pieced together was
by him keeping a reflective journal of each week,
interviews with the researcher and a survey of players.
In addition, the researcher attended training sessions and
matches, and kept his own notes. The three main themes
that emerged over the season were:
•

•

•

changing session plans

clarifying the relationship between objectives and
the style of the session

understanding that there is more to Game Sense
than playing games.

‘Must learn to get the balance right’

An analysis of Chris’s session plans at the start of the
season showed he was very much in the traditional
camp – directive ‘skill and drill’ activities coupled with
fitness and conditioning. As the season went on, the
plans became more game-centred but still did not
reflect Game Sense as they lacked any obvious
conceptual or skill-development connection to the
activities. It was only towards the end of the season (a
full five months) that the plans reflected the ideas of
complementary aspects of play and learning technique.

When to step back,
when to give instruction

The most difficult part of the journey for Chris was
getting the relationship right between what he was
trying to achieve in a session and the activities he
planned. It was about creating a consistency throughout
the session, which again is in contrast to the idea that
this approach is merely about playing games and seeing
what happens. As he wrote in