Coaches' toolkit
Everything here is optional. Every team runs its own way, and if your children and parents are happy, keep doing what you're doing.
These tools are here if they help: a session planned in two minutes, fair minutes on match day, a card for a chat with each child, and a certificate for the fridge.
The tools
Session builder
Pick the birth year, the theme, how many children and coaches, and the space, and get a 60-minute session to print or save. Every game can be swapped.
Build a session
Match day planner
Pick the formation and tick who's here. You get each period's team, row by row, and who comes off and on at each break. Save each match and the minutes even out over the season.
Plan a match
Focus cards
For the short chat with each child once or twice a season: going well, focus for now, and a QR code that sets up their home games.
Make a card
Certificates
Virgil's hardest worker award, and one for each club value: work hard, be brave, lift each other. Print it or send it as a picture.
Make a certificate
Practice games
The whole library, with filters for birth year, theme, players, space, equipment and time.
Open the library
New to coaching? Start here
The new coach guide: your first six weeks, who to ask about what, the league rules that matter, and six ready-made sessions for each age group.
Read the new coach guideTips that work
Things our coaches have found work, and that the research on children's sport backs up. Take what helps.
Keep them moving
A ball each where you can, everyone in the game, and straight back in after a tag. If a child has stood still for 30 seconds, change something.
Show it, don't tell it
A demo under 30 seconds beats a speech. Then let them play, and coach one child at a time, on the move.
Be clear, and be kind
Children trust a coach who tells them what to fix as well as what's good. Say why: "I'm telling you because I know you can do it." Then catch them getting it right.
Their number is their number
Children count their own score and try to beat their own last go. The only target is their own best.
Name it when you see it
"You chased back straight away. That's work hard." Children repeat what gets noticed, so notice the habits as well as the goals.
Mistakes are part of it
After a mistake, say "go again" and mean it. Children who feel safe to get it wrong try more, and keep going.
Leaders in every team
Every team has children who lead, often in quiet ways. Spot them, and give them a job: captain or vice-captain for the day, leading the warm-up, welcoming a new player. They set the tone, and the rest follow.
Team habits worth copying
- Everyone lifts the cones at the end.
- Bibs go straight back into the bag.
- Respect for the coaches and the referee, always.
- Finishers sit together and watch the match, ready to go on.
- At half time, full time and after training, ask what they learned, and which part they enjoyed most. They love telling you.
- Keep asking them for feedback, and always praise.
When a child lifts someone else, a new teammate or a friend having a hard day, give it a lift each other certificate and say why. That's how a culture spreads.
Young leaders: older players helping younger ones
Anyone in the club, including teenagers from our older teams, can volunteer to help with a younger group. They learn to lead and give something back, and the younger children love having them there.
- An adult coach is always in charge. Young leaders help alongside them, and aren't counted in the coach numbers.
- Give them one job at a time: run a warm-up game, be the joker in a possession game, show a skill.
- Games tagged "young leader friendly" in the library are simple ones a young leader can run with you beside them.
- Mixed-age games need the club welfare officer's OK before they run. The card says so.
- Praise the leading as well as the playing: "You noticed she was stuck and went to help. That's lift each other."
Want to help, or know a teenager who would? Young volunteers.
Break it, then tell us
Tried the tools? Tell us what you love and what could be better. Every message is read.
Send feedback about the site