What was the feedback concerning players parents?
The survey asked, would you prefer parents to give information
or feedback or the coach.
The players mostly said they while they wanted their parents
involved they preferred the coaches feedback and this was due to
the players seeing their coach as a mini Pep or Klopp so to speak
and they wanted some ownership.
So what was the next step.
We thought given the fact that most of the coaches involved in
grassroots had other full time jobs and were probably only
thinking about what session they would be doing that night
maybe an hour before the session was due, we thought how can
we help make take the workload off them so to speak and
provide a resource. Everyone realises the commitment and value
these voluntary coaches provide and the game would struggle to
function without them. So we came up with our street games
resource.
How did you present it to the grassroots coaches?
I took it to Hearts and spoke with chairwoman Anne Budge who
is very community minded and she was very supportive and got
right behind the program. We then went to East Lothian and
delivered a session free of charge and attracted 60 coaches. My
colleague delivered another the next night and another 60
turned up for that. The feedback was superb. We followed that up
with a session at the new Oriam facility to which 250 coaches
attended, which was unbelievable.