WHY PLANNING IS A MUST FOR EVERY COACH

Planning is a critical element for any coach, novice or experienced, community or elite. The old adage that 'those who fail to plan, indeed plan to fail' rings true ever more in the coaching game. Planning can seem like a tedious task, and some coaches indeed avoid it at all costs, but I believe all coaches owe their athletes the greatest experience possible and you honestly won't be able to give that without a season, cycle or session plan.

Planning doesn't have to be a chore. Indeed it is a chance to have a collective approach with fellow coaches, your team leaders, your athletes involved. More minds are stronger than one, you just need a clear process for how you document your ideas and then shape your content.

Lets say that it is the end of the season and clubs are actively recruiting coaches and players. Congratulations, you have for the purposes of this scenario been appointed as a Senior Coach for your Rugby League clubs Under 18 team. You have 2 assistant coaches allocated to your team. Both are in their first season of coaching with playing experience behind them. You have 7 players that played this year eligible to play next year, however the players will have study commitments for Year 12.

Unfortunately, the outgoing coach didn't leave a season review document and although you and your assistants had watched the team play sporadically through the season, you don't have enough of an idea on what the group was doing well or needed to improve.

You have come to your planning session. You have in attendance:

  • Assistant coaches X 2
  • 2 Parents whom are interested in being off-field staff
  • 4 players that are returning next year
  • Local Rugby League Development Officer

You have the following resources at your planning session:

  • Pens, paper
  • Whiteboard and markers
  • Refreshments, Tea, Coffee, Water and Snacks.

As Senior Coach, it will be your first opportunity to drive a session with prospective members of your team. This will be a great opportunity to demonstrate to your team how you will operate in the future.

The first part of your plan should be to create your ideal wish-list for what you want your team to achieve during the season. Lets call these our Outcomes. The Outcomes that your team has decided to strive for are:

OUTCOMES

  1. Win Under 18 Rugby League Competition
  2. Improve player capability
  3. Improve coach capability
  4. Retain players to Senior Club teams

Following on from designing your Outcomes will come a Core Strategy or Strategies. For this plan we will have the following:

CORE STRATEGIES

  1. Football Department
  2. Welfare

Next we are going to need to look at critical areas that will guide our plan. We will call these our Growth Areas. For this plan, our planning team has identified that we will implement Growth through:

GROWTH AREAS

Football Department

  1. Specific Season Content (Win Under 18 Rugby League Competition)
  2. Decision Making (Improve player capability)
  3. Coach Education (Improve coach capability)

Welfare

      4. Personal Growth (Retain players to Senior Club teams)

Now your plan is slowly taking shape for a simple 1 page guide. You have decided on your Growth Areas and next you will come up with your Goals. Your goals will be specific to your Growth Area. We will break down our Goals for our Specific Season Content only. Here is what Goals the planning session delivered:

GOALS

  1. Identify Priorities from a season review 
  2. Allocate Content responsibilities
  3. Allocate Role responsibilities e.g: Attack, Defence, Set Plays
  4. Design Leadership Group content

Next you will have a final section where you will identify your backers, enablers or in this case, your Supporters.

SUPPORTERS

Specific Season Content

  1. Local Peak Body engagement

So now you have used your planning session to design a simple one page document that will guide the creation of your content for the season. You have engaged your fellow coaches, some of your players and also engaged positively with the local peak body development officer. 

What happens next? From here you and your fellow coaches will begin designing content that has been allocated. The Local Rugby League Development Officer and the players may conduct the season review. This review will identify where and how relevant coaching approach should continue to work on what was done well and address areas for improvement.

Once this is sorted, game style for the forecast player list, team strengths and work on's will be identified to create a team playing style, and training plan that addresses the style and addresses the Growth Areas and Goals into heavier detail.

Please find the following example of your starting plan.

Now the real planning starts. It may take some weeks or months to get bone deep into what you design in order to achieve your agreed Outcomes. Consult with your fellow coaches regularly about how they are progressing in their design process for their allocated tasks.

In my experience, from this simple one page framework, a really thorough and easy to follow Season Guide can follow. Currently, my fellow coaches have their season framework, season training guide and season game tactics all on their phones and iPads.

Enjoy your future planning experiences.

HR

 

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Hayden Rickard