High Performance At Other Places - Something To Learn

There is a review being undertaken by Ron Smith at the moment concerning the Capital Football HPP. The report will make interesting reading. Ron has the experience and breadth of international and domestic observation to merit respect and for his conclusions to be taken seriously. But that does not mean we all stop thinking.

Two glaring omissions from our high performance regime jump up and hit you in the face when you look at the manner in which other states are doing their work with talented players.

Communication

Communication is one thing you must have sorted out if you are going to run a high performance program in any sport. Communication between parents, coach, the Sports organisation running the training and of course, the players. Communication is more than notices on a website.

If you go back to the NPL interview on Project 22 (Football NSW HPP) you will realise just how much importance they placed on establishing a trustworthy and timely system of communication. It was a "two pillar" system. They created their own web based solutions to cover these crucial issues. One system is called an "Athlete Performance Tracking System" which serves to manage the individual player, while the other is called "Global Football Systems" which serves to enable coaches to instruct and support players on the content of training sessions. They work.

The FFA contemplated both these issues when it did the deal for the web based product known as S2S. Some of us have been trained to operate the system. The only thing it seemed to be missing when I looked last was an SMS function, but perhaps that is fixed now. It should be.

Does the Capital Football High Performance Program have anything like the Project 22 solution to communication and support, or, the FFA's S2S? The answer is no! Why? Because no one got off their backside and put it in place.

Whole of Year Periodised Programs

This is one of the Football NSW programs from one of their age group squads. Lost and lots of details. Link it to Global Football System's other support for players and coaches and you have the entire football development picture. Join it to their Player Performance Tracking System and you have a total football administrative support system. Gives you this feeling they know what they are doing. S2S provides the same functionality.

Coaches, players and parents in Football HPPs, like teachers / students / parents at school, rely on knowing precisely what must be taught and to a specified standard. They expect the resources to be provided to enable the programs (or schooling) to achieve good outcomes for all concerned.  That should be our start point - anything less is a waste of time.

Both Project 22 and Football West run High Performance programs that span approximately one year (not necessarily a calender year). Capital Football has employed a model which has separate Winter and Summer programs, with potentially different personnel and linkages between the programs that are not easy to discern, nor do they appear to be explained in sufficient detail, anywhere on the Capital Football website.

Project 22 presents its squad members and parents with  a detailed periodised program through their Global Football Systems portal. I can't show it to you here, so go and sing in for a free 30 day trial as see what I mean. That's what I did. (http://coach.globalfootballsystem.com/index.php?home ) Did you get anything like this for your child in the Capital football Program? You should demand it.

Football West provides a periodised program for the year to their players. coaches and parents. Go to this location to have a look - http://www.footballwest.com.au/resources/New%20HPC%20Calendars.pdf . This document is not in the same detail as Project 22, which is not to say they do not provide more detail, but it does provide a whole of year view of the program calender.

Capital Football appears to have something less of a solution when compared with either Football West or Football NSW's Project 22. Why?  For example:

• The High Performance section of the Capital Football website is where you find information on individual squads - by birth date
• The information provided differs between squads - why? For example, the "2002 Combined squad" has a list of squad members, coaches names, generic training times, location(s) and no calender for the entire program. Same for several other HPP squads. However, the "Under 17 Boys" and "1996 Squad" contains a complete list of the the training dates / times / locations for the program.
• There is no periodised program for any of the HPP squads (by age) published on the Capital Football website, nor does it seem to exist in the form you would receive it, if you were a squad member in Football NSW's Project 22. Why? What instructions are the HPP coaching staff given for the entire program, what information do parents have or did they have before the program began. Who does the quality control on the coaching staff and players (independent of coaches views). If the coaches have received specific instruction, are they able to be published and have they been provided with any coaching support resources - in the form you are able to access in either Project 22's Global Support System or the FFA's S2S? If not, why not?
• As to any sort of performance tracking system - I'm not aware of any, other than adhoc notices put up on the website, and presumably, coaches making phones calls / sending SMS on their phone to players / parents etc. We need much more than this and it is available.

We have a lot more yet to be done on our high performance training. Some of it is foundation work, work that others have cracked and we have not here in the ACT. In the meantime, parents pay a lot of money for their children to attend what is presently called high performance training. We have a lot of work to do and it might just be helpful if we picked up the best and most appropriate aspects of other solutions. Just one very small slice of that $26 million that went to AFL could do a power of good.

Now its up to Capital Football to find the financial resources that will almost certainly be demanded by the outcomes of Ron Smith's review, without passing the costs onto the parents, in order to  merit the term "high performance" training.