Hey Guys - below is not really a problem I need help with, but sometimes it just feels good to say/type stuff to get it off your chest. Was originally going to have a conversation directly with
@Sir Chadley about this, because we have boys close in age and have had some similar conversations in the past. I thought afterwards that there might be others who would benefit from hearing/reading my story.
Very brief background for those who don't know me... I coached junior footy for several years across a couple of different clubs. During that time I had several run-ins with club and league people, specifically around player safety (duty of care) and prioritising player involvement/development over winning games. I also coached my son and quite a few of the friends he has known since he was in kindy.
This story is specifically about my experience coaching my son, what I learned from it, and what became of it.
Coaching your own child
When you sign up to coach your own kid, you pin a target on yourself. Every dodgy decision every other father-coach has made in the past is hanging in the air, and parents are waiting for an opportunity to tar you with that brush. I made a few conscious decisions the day I put my hand up to coach:
1) Every child plays at least half the game (which is also a league rule for u12 down)
and at they get on the field in both halves
2) The players who attend training the most will be the ones who play more than this
3) Key positions will be played by the players with the best attendance
4) The opportunity to play key positions will be
offered to all of the best trainers
5) If my son ever misses training in game week because he is sick/injured, he's on the bench (even if that's the only session he's missed all year)
6) Weaker players don't get hidden on the wing.
With this, I also prioritised ball movement and player involvement over scoring points (I would rather see a 6-pass movement where we got pushed in to touch than a 1m try from dummy half). If we were going to win games, we were going to do it with contributions from everyone rather than by riding our best players.
My coaching career started with something like 8 consecutive losses, and we played the better teams we got pumped. I did all sorts of whacky stuff that parents hated, like playing big kids in the halves (everyone should learn to pass in game situations), playing without a fullback (everyone should learn to defend in a line) and making the kid who only ever played dummy half spend time as a running forward (everyone should learn how to catch and run). By the end of the year we were competitive against
most teams and we we moving the ball around more than any team I'd seen that age. We didn't have any fast kids, so we'd rarely score runaway tries - but we made plenty of breaks from good ball movement.
In that year and the couple following years all of this whacky stuff extended to my own son. He literally played every position, started games from the bench and regularly came off during games. He spent plenty of time playing in key positions - but often more out of necessity than design (injuries etc,). The way we played though, "key position" doesn't mean "throwing the kid a bib". I worked out a way to play which shared the passing load around between a few players.
I'm proud to say that across those three "bib footy years" I was able to achieve all of my goals. There were some exceptions that were out of my control (player gets injured in-game or turns up late so can't get half a game) but outside of that I stuck to my plan 100%. Once we got out of bib footy, my son was almost always on the field - but that was because we were struggling for numbers, so game time was never an issue for anyone in that team,
This was a
massive undertaking away from the field. The standard attitude for coaches at this age level is to identify your best 3-4 candidates to be the ballplayers, and share the responsibilities between them across the season depending on who turns up. I took the view that because I'm just some dude and not an elite-level talent scout with magical predictive powers, I don't know who the best candidate to play in the halves (or anywhere for that matter) will be 7 years from now when the games matter, so as long as they turn up to training, listen and don't stuff around... they are all going to be offered an opportunity to be a ball-player. I had to re-invent the way we played so that we could train a new half every second week and still play the same way. It was time-consuming and difficult - but very rewarding to see in action.
The
best passer was my son, and the team performed much better when he played in a ball-playing role than when he didn't - but he still spent his fair share of time on the wing and in other spots, sat on the bench, or played a supporting role for someone new (one time he played wing and spent half a game hovering behind the play directing the game ball-player where to go. He didn't touch the ball the entire time but had a huge positive impact on that kid).
This
did not however stop me from taking my fair share of heat from some parents about my
bias towards my own kid. I was accused of playing him at too many minutes, of not giving other kids the opportunity to play his position, and so on. All nonsense which I could back up with detailed records, but whenever this discussion happened it wasn't because the parent was looking to talk about the facts. They just want to see you as
that guy who thinks his son is s superstar and builds the team around him.
Balanced with this was that one of the bigger critics of our playing style was
my own wife. She said that before I coached the team our son stood out, was the leading try-scorer, and everyone said he was the best player - but now he hardly ever scores tries, she doesn't notice him making any stand out plays anymore, and there are half a dozen other kids everyone raves about. The thing is... I already knew he could run the ball hard and beat tackles - but my job as his coach wasn't to make him do what he is already good at. It was to make him get better at the things he isn't already good at... and to help the other kids learn. The best players in team sport at any level are the ones who know that
helping your teammates is part of the job description.
Player Development
Along with everything I spoke about above with regard to development, game time and opportunities in different situations, there were also some key development principles that I took on board the day I became a coach:
1) I can't tell which of these players will be good later
2) Every year is a clean slate for every position
3) The kids who are the biggest today probably won't have that advantage forever
4) While having fit players is good, having self-motivated young men is better
For coaching young kids you need to actively avoid the "rich getting richer" (Pygmalion Effect / Matthew Effect). If a player did a great job at hooker for you last year that is great. Maybe he can do it again... or maybe some other kid will benefit from time spent there and that first kid will learn more doing something else this year, or splitting his time While it seems intuitive to identify that player's "best position" and reinforce it... getting in an extra coach to do special dummy half training with just that kid is unequivocally the
wrong thing to do. Sure - if dummy half service is a team issue then you address it... but you run that training for a group of players (or all players). Not just for the one who is best at it today or whose body-shape suits that role for the upcoming season.
I am also very proud to say that I have never instructed a team to run a lap, do a burpee or sprint up a hill. I got a
lot of heat for "not doing fitness" and actually had parents pull kids from the team because of it, but once again this was a deliberate and planned approach. I spent hours designing training sessions around minimising "stand and wait" time, maximising time spent moving, and introducing "get down on the ground and get back up again" as many times as possible - especially for the bigger boys. My players were completely gassed at the end of most sessions - and they got fitter without ever having run a lap (or realising that tonight was a "fitness night). Parents want to see laps though...
The benefit of this approach are many and varied. Firstly, I don't burn a training night running laps when we could be learning something with footy in hand, and I don't risk the lazy kids skipping the fitness night. Secondly, the kids also get a lot of their footy skills training under fatigue, so they both get to practice in that situation, and I get to see where they cut corners or make errors when they are tired. The biggest reason though, is that all of the research tells you not to...
Any teenager can be driven to training by his mum and run laps, and while this might make them fitter and help you win games - it won't make them better players. What will make them better players is developing the intrinsic motivation to take it on themselves to get fitter and stronger
without their mum, dad, coach or school making them do it or looking over their shoulder. This is something that kicks in at different ages for different kids, but if they are going to be a good footy player later in life they need to have it. Making players run laps doesn't develop this. You get it by loving/understanding the game and grasping the idea that being fitter and stronger will make you a better player (and possibly give you an advantage over someone else).
Again it is all about making better players. Not winning footy games.
Get to the ****ing Point Burgo
So how does all of this relate specifically to my son?
When you coach your own son you also wonder whether you are over-valuing his contribution. In my time coaching
I think his fundamental skills are the best I've ever coached, objectively his work rate is far above most of his peers, and
I think he has potential to play at least a junior rep comp when he is older (Qld version of Harold Mats / SG Ball). That he is even a top 5 player on his own middle-of-the-road team definitely wasn't a universally held view though, even among my own club, other coaches, or my assistant coaches. You ask yourself things like
am I over-looking some negatives in his game to hype up the positives? Am I over-valuing the things he does well compared to what other players are doing well? Are other people not seeing it, or am I wrong and everyone else is on the ball?
Since I've stopped coaching he finished out the back end of last year (only 2-3 games) and this year has moved back to his old team where he knows quite a few kids. He has started doing gym and running and swimming on his own, and has joined two other sports teams at school. He rides himself to training sometimes or gets himself there direct from school, always gets to training half an hour early, and kicks goals after. When do drive him to footy, he is hovering around well before I am ready, fully dressed and jumping out of his skin. No carrot or stick required.
Suffice to say that the intrinsic motivation has kicked in. That doesn't mean he is going to be a superstar. It just means that he has taken a really important step in his development. It's on him from here.
His team played their first trial on the weekend. Opposition was a decent level but likely also had their own fair share of newbies cycling through. The coach started with his "best 13" from last year and ran them for most of the first half - with mostly new kids playing the whole second half.
So anyway... "best 13" is down 10-0 at halftime. Here is the rundown of relevant second half events...
- first set young Burgo hit-up on his own 10. Breaks line. Runs 90m to score. Kicks goal from in front
- next set young Burgo kicks to a corner, leads the chase, forces an error.
- ensuing set young Burgo runs a line, beats two defenders, draws in a third, puts the winger over in the corner, kicks goal from the side-line
- next set young Burgo kicks to a corner and pins the opposition 10m out
- teammates give up back to back penalties, then soft try under the posts. Down 16-12
- next possession get a penalty on full time siren. Two passes wide to young Burgo, who breaks line, gets ankle tapped from behind, offloads to un-marked centre with the line wide open... who drops it cold.
It would have been nice to see him have that kick to win it, but there are no parades for winning trial games.
While some will see this as a bit of a brag (maybe it is) it's an important closure for me personally. He is objectively a good player. He is driven and motivated to play the sport, and can excel under a new coach with unfamiliar teammates, limited opportunities, and against solid opposition.
To get to this level he didn't have to run laps, get custom training in his position, join a rep program, go to a footy school or (in my opinion) have has Dad give him priority treatment or pump up his tyres. He might need some of those things to get
noticed one day
, but he didn't need them to be good.
Now if I can just get him to rinse out his Weetbix bowl and take the wheelie bin out without it feeling like a hostage negotiation - things will be great.
*
Thanks to everyone who read right through. Feels good to brain dump.