NTC Challenge, Player Transfers, What does it mean to have a "good engine" in Football and more from Sports Psychologist Paul Penna.

Broadcast on the Australian Community Radio Network, 2xxfm, 98.3mhz on Tuesday, 2 February 2010 and podcast around the world!

In this program we cover the NTC Challenge. It was a sensational tournament, directed at the nation’s best 15 / 16 year boys and don’t we have some good players! SASI won everything except the goalkeeper award and were a wonderfully prepared team from the first whistle to the last.

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Football West continued to demonstrate just how good they are all the way through from their Football HPP through to their NTC. ACTAS did very well on the scoreboard (wins, draws) but fell short on the award of technical bonus points, denying them outright Challenge winner. Why did we play 17year olds in this challenge?

You have probably heard coaches comment that a player has “a good engine”. Well, for “engine” read “the human body’s’ energy systems”. The Australian Sports Commission tells us what this means for us in football. Then we move to a very hot issue in football from club all the way to A League and the FFA.

It’s the compensation and payments made to community based clubs by A League clubs when they recruit a player and then sell the player to an overseas club for lots and lots of money. I can think of several players from the ACT who might be in this mix. No surprise to learn its community football that might be at risk of being the loser.

Then it’s on to Paul Penna for the second part of his interview, in which he covers player and parent attitudes, motivation and behaviour. You can’t go past his common sense advice. How much it from professionals like Penna do our HPP participants get as part of their player development?