Positive learning environment

An effective coaching approach is for a coach to understand the individual or the person that's in front of them and how we can support their development over the longer term, not just concerned about winning or concerned about where they are at this moment in time, it's how we can support their long-term development, how we can support the skills, the technical, tactical and physical development that they need to require to get to, hopefully one day being a number one for our national team. When I go to watch a session some of the things that I want to look for is first and foremost that it's a fun environment, we have to make sure that the players are enjoying what they do and they fall in love with the game. What we also want to make sure is on the goalkeeping perspective is that the session is game realistic, it looks like what could happen in the game and the goalkeepers have been challenged but also provided with support to help their development. On the pitch that might look like different types of sessions that are related to the game but it also might be used to use a video technology or it might be the use of one to one's and communication off the pitch to support their development. We also want to make sure that the goalkeeper coach is not in isolation, we want them to be part of the team as well so that the goalkeeper coach and the head coach is having communication and how they can build the sessions and how they can develop the sessions that the outfield coach is putting on to support the goalkeepers development as well. Game realistic coaching in a goalkeeper session might look like taking a moment of the game and utilising that moment to try and build and develop a session where the goalkeeper has to make a number of decisions or utilise a number of skills and techniques to make the right decision at the right time. We want our goalkeepers to have good game understanding as they move forward as they develop and when you play at the highest level you will be challenged on that all the time so in a long-term process we want to make sure that the goalkeepers have every opportunity to try and develop their experience, develop their knowledge and understanding and be able to perform under pressure at these moments. Any level of the game, as a coach we have to understand that mistakes are going to happen. The skill of the coach is how we use those mistakes and how we use the opportunity to try and develop the young player that we're working with or the older player who is still making mistakes and to try and help them support their development too. Mistakes are an opportunity and as a coach our behaviour, the environment that we create will allow players and goalkeepers to make mistakes. It's how we help them learn and how we help support them that will see them develop and see them improve in the longer term.

When I think back about the younger years and what I enjoyed or the exercises I enjoyed doing it, obviously I loved the technical games because as a defender it gave me a moment to kind of show off in front of the offensive-minded players and show that I had the ability outside of just defending, I really took to competition in training. I needed to win, I wanted to do good, I wanted my team to succeed, so competition was definitely tied into anything that I had joined doing. Small-sided games, the fast-paced movement of small-sided games, I really loved that because I gave you the bragging right until the next day's events. I really appreciated the technical aspects because for myself in order to get to a higher level you needed to be technically savvy and competent, but also that competition, right? You need that edge, you need to have that sense of desperation of not wanting to lose in order to excel yourself, so I really appreciated those. I would say that as I grew not much changed, I still loved showing strikers that I had somewhat of competencies in terms of skills, but the competition never dies in you. I want to win all the time, I want my team to win all the time, and it almost annoys me when people take things too lightly or took things too lightly in my past, so I don't think that feeling from the youth to the senior team ever subsided. It probably grew a little bit stronger, and as my voice grew a little bit stronger within teams, so I think that was an important element for myself in my journey to understand what I needed to become better, to progress, and to really impose myself in a team format.