Thank you everyone for
your warm welcome to the club.
This
week was my first opportunity to have a good look around. The club certainly
has wonderful facilities and I have been very impressed with the enthusiasm of
the coaches that I have met, and the passion of the leadership team who clearly
want good outcomes for all our players.
This
is the first of many regular updates I will provide for club members.
It is
not my intention to just come in and start making changes. There is a lot of
good quality work happening at the club so it is important to respect that
work, but also see where further development and improvement can be made.
To
inform that process I will be conducting a formal review of the coaching
program which will involve collecting the perspectives of existing coaches,
parents of players as well as youth and above players over the coming 2-3
weeks. This will largely be through an online survey which you will be able to
access via the Club’s normal communication channels. If you see me about the place you are also welcome
to introduce yourself and share your thoughts. Within a month I hope to have
collected and analysed that data, shared it with the club’s existing senior
coaches and committee, and identified actions to move forward in the short
term.
This
week has been very much about me listening to and observing what is happening
on the football field in relation to coaching. It is obvious that there is a
wide range of coaching abilities from the very experienced to those with little
or no prior experience. It is important that I acknowledge and thank those
parents who have taken on the mantle of coach. I am here to help you and will
be making contact with you with some support options in the next week.
There
are also many coaches who are extremely passionate about their work. I look
forward to helping them to sharpen their coaching skills so that they can
improve their effectiveness in player development.
I met
with other senior coaches recently and discussed a variety of topics including
roles and expectations, communication, alignment of our coaching to the FFA
coaching curriculum, how coaches plan their sessions, resources for coaches,
coaching expectations and standards, and the possibility of a school-holiday
coaching program. I will be sharing progress on these and other topics in
future updates.
My
role is to put in place coaching programs that align to the overall mission and
goals of this club. I look forward to using my knowledge, experience and skills
to make this happen.
Cheers.
Ken
Swan
Director
of Coaching