The Final Piece of the Jigsaw

I realised a few weeks ago that this year sees the completion of my 20th anniversary involved in coaching football.

I started out doing the old style ‘Preliminary Coaching Award’ back in 1990. Two friends and I completed the course, down at Chichester College (it’s now a University) under the tutelage of one Steve Avory. Steve is an ex-teacher at Hazlewick School, erstwhile England U15 manager and now Charlton FC Assistant Academy Manager.

Steve brought a seriousness, organisation and logic to football that I hadn’t experienced before, being, essentially, a recreational standard player, myself.

Steve’s style and attention to detail inspired me to attend a “Pre-Preparatory course” at Lancing College, lead by Sussex County coach, Dennis Probee and with sessions lead by Steve Avory and Albion’s Steve Ford.

The training courses you could attend in preparation for the Advanced Licence, as it was in those days, were called ‘Preparatory Courses’ as they were essentially to prepare you for the full coaching licence experience. The ‘Pre-Prep’ course was organised by Dennis so that you could see what the, usually, weekend and 2/3 day courses were like.

During the day, Steve Avory encouraged me to have a go at the prep course coming up in Crawley that December and with those few words of encouragement, I was off and running

The Crawley prep course was directed by South East Regional coach, Les Reed who was later to become Charlton FC first team coach and then manager and FA Technical Director for a time. Les was similarly inspirational and really these 6 months from Prelim to my first Prep Course were instrumental in seeing me onto the coaching pathway.

Over the years, I have studiously kept an open mind and have explored a great deal of approaches / philosophies /methodologies, call them what you will (see earlier post “So Which Way IS the Right Way”) and have also looked at other aspects such as treatment of injury, psychology and even currently I am reading a book on teaching - in an effort to see how I can become a better coach.

Latterly, I have attended the Age Appropriate Coaching courses from the FA from the Introductory 1 day module to the two 4 day courses for Modules 1 and 2.

These have fired my interest even more and I have recently started down the path of undertaking the Generic Tutor Training path in an effort to become a certified tutor and to help pass on information to the next generation of coaches.

But as well as the aim of becoming a tutor, I believe it will also help me become a more accomplished coach.

As part of the process you have to attend a ‘familiarisation day’ where new potential tutors are exposed to the course content from a deliverer’s point of view, rather than as an attendee.

I was having a chat with one of my colleagues and we were discussing different coaching approaches, when it dawned on me that I had always been seeking that ‘final piece of the jigsaw’ - you know, the one that completes the puzzle and that makes you ‘an expert’, or pretty close to it.

But, after 20 years, I’m pretty sure there isn’t one. The picture just gets bigger, brighter and more detailed with every day.

The more I learn, the more I realise I still don’t know.

I didn’t have a formal University education and so a lot of what I learn is through personal research and a process of osmosis, picking things up from other coaches, other sports and even other environments which I believe can be transferred to football.

For me, coaching is a passion so I’ll carry on coaching and learning until I can’t physically or mentally do it anymore. And whilst I’ll keep looking for the next piece of the jigsaw, I don’t think I’ll ever complete the picture.