The weekend of 21st and 22nd  January 2012 saw 12 coaches arriving at the newly finished David Phillips Sporting Complex, home of the UNSW Lions WSL teams and ESFA’s new state of the art artificial playing surface to undertake 2012’s first Goalkeeping Certificate & Licence Courses conducted by FFA presenter James Rankine.

The courses were attended by a wide range of coaches; both male and female but special mention must go to mother and son duo Angela and Ronald Lawrence who travelled over 800kms to take part in the course.  Angela and Ronald boarded a flight from Melbourne at 3am Saturday morning and participated in the first course. They stayed Saturday night and backed up for the Licence course on Sunday. They then boarded a plane at Sydney airport at 7pm for their flight back home. Now that’s dedication to coach education!

Mother & son team Angela & Ronald Lawrence flew up from Melbourne for the weekend to attend the ESFA courses

The Goalkeeping Certificate Course conducted on Saturday was a 7 hour course aimed at players 8-11 year of age. The course structure provided plenty of opportunities for the coaches to see model goalkeeper sessions and to get involved in the planning and presentation of their own safe, appropriate and age related goalkeeper technical practices. Even when the heavens opened up the synthetic surface allowed the participants to continue unhindered.  The Certificate course is “not assessed” meaning that the participants did not need to do an assessment to be awarded the Certificate but rather had ongoing opportunities throughout the course via a series of “group coaching” practice sessions. They completed a “self assessment” checklist following their sessions and received feedback from peers as well as the presenter.

The sun came out on Sunday for the Goalkeeping Licence Course, but the heat didn’t deter the group from participating in the topics being presented. There were plenty of discussions on various topics with plenty of new techniques learnt, demonstrated and performed. The licence course has a similar format to Certificate course, it’s 7 hours long but it’s aimed at players aged 12-15 years. The course  seeks to reinforce the “change it” methodology of the teaching through seeing and experiencing more “model” goalkeeper technical sessions. Candidates were also provided multiple opportunities to conduct practices as part of a group and as an individual in preparation for the Licence Assessment, with the individual assessment needing to be passed for the participants to be awarded the Licence.

FFA Presenter James Rankine commented “The coaches should be commended for their enthusiasm and willingness to work together and support each other under extreme weather conditions, as well as their open and honest discussions that enabled the whole group to benefit and become better coaches.”

One candidate sends feedback saying “I just wanted to express my sincere thanks for the 2 courses you ran this past weekend. I have gained an insight and some great tips and coaching points from you that I will put into practice. Once again, thank you for a well-run course and for the enormous work and effort that you put into the course”.

ESFA believes in the FFA mantra of “Better Coaches, Better Players”, so get yourself onto one of the upcoming ESFA courses. The next course to be run is a Senior Certificate I & II and Senior Licence starting Saturday 4th Feb at David Phillips Oval. Please check the Coach Education page of the ESFA website for more details. If you don’t see a course available that you would like to attend please let us know by emailing info@esfa.com.au

Sally Paterson,
ESFA Technical Director