The Book

Preamble

About the book I started a UK Coaching Course in 1968 but left for Australia in 1969, In Australia but I completed a Basic Soccer Coaching Course and a Level 1 Soccer Coaching Course in Western Australia.

After a short return to England (where I played with a local Sunday league team), I decided to move permanently to Western Australia and in 1973 upon my arrival I was asked to coach the soccer program at a university, so I became the semi-professional soccer coach, $5000 pa, at the Western Australian Institute of Technology.

I tried to find some coaching grids and books but there was little at that time because the “internet” was a new concept, so I devised my own style of coaching keeping players moving constantly and developing pressure training sessions. These proved quite successful and the sessions were well received by the players. I had a happy couple of years there before moving on coach a Sunday Premier Amateur Team in 1975, (I had played for and coached previously back in the 1970’s).

I again used my pressure grids and routines which by now had grown substantially. The following season the club won the league and every cup competition in both first team and reserve team. My sessions and grids were enjoyed by the players as I developed the grids and we all got a great deal of fun from the well organised hand written and poorly draw coaching sessions, some worked well others needed more development.

State Teams

Because of the success of my teams, In 1976 I became the State Team Coach for the Amateur Soccer Association of Western Australia and I remained as state team coach, until leaving for Queensland in 1978 where I played semi-professionally and coached at a premier club as an academy special skills development coach.

I returned to Perth in 1979 and became a sports administrator for soccer and gave up coaching at a senior level. However my son was now playing, so when their coach quit at half time, after some dismal performance, I happened to be standing next to the canteen drinking a tea when I was suddenly thrust into the position, and was asked to take over coaching the Under 13 team. In my many years of coaching, I had never coached juniors and this team was in bad shape, the team had lost the first five games of the 1983 season. After my first junior coaching session, I soon realised that children could not be expected to undertake senior sessions and I quickly modified my grids and brought in some fun games and simple routines. Most have been added to this book. Many of these juniors did not even know how to kick a ball correctly! so I started them on a basic skills programme.

 

I remembered how I had struggled to find suitable grids and routines, and fortunately for me I had previously done the ground work and I had my grids from senior soccer coaching, which I quickly adapted for the juniors. Once I had adapted the grids we had young players coming to join the club and eventually had to form a second team in that age group. But this train of thought led to keep in mind the production of this book. Having previously devised my own coaching sessions, based on continuous movement and pressure, which included warm up, stretching, fitness drills, skill developments sessions and coaching routines, for seniors, I now modified the grids and sessions for both juniors, youth (girls and boys) or senior players. I eventually designed and photocopied a coaching sheet, which I used as a layout sheet and I kept a record of each training session. I drew up grid sheets and more layout sheets, showing the pitch and boxes for grids and I worked out from various books the certain skills and drills that I thought would benefit my team.

As I tried each one out, I developed some and scrapped others, but I eventually had a plan of what I wanted to do for each session, and I had a plan for the whole season. I coached that junior team from Under 13's to Under 16's and we won promotion to the Premier League in the next season. Most of those kids went onto much better things, the kids enjoyed the sessions and we all had a great respect for each other, but the amazing thing was, I had kids coming from other clubs wanting to join us, just because of the training sessions! We had fun and the players were learning and improving each week. We were all looking forward to each training session. The club had so many players for my age group, that they eventually started a reserve team and both teams were very successful. I eventually completed the Level II coaching course and I subsequently completed the Level III Coaching course. After leaving sports administration I moved from junior club coaching, back to senior club coaching, and took on a role as Youth Academy Coach for Under 13's.

I publishing the book myself I still kept those training session sheets and filed them away every week for each year of training. I now had sheets for senior players, juniors, women and state team players. So I now had a collection of over two hundred grids, including games, coaching routines, skill developments sessions and fitness sessions. I purchased a computer and using Microsoft Word and a drawing package called “Superpaint” I created little graphics of players. I have copied most ofthe grids onto my computer

Original graphics (Superpaint)

No one offered to publish it so I created a web site copyrighted my book and advertised the book under my multimedia company “PIP Multimedia”.

I was then asked to again coach the Western Australian Amateur Senior State Team, (1990-1993) and also the Western Australian Women's Senior State Team (1991-1993) simultaneously. In 1993 I was named as the Western Australian Coach of the Year, mainly for my involvement with the Women's State Team, who had their best performance and placing at the Australian National Titles in ten years.

I produced two booklets for various coaching clinics that I ran. The first was "Soccer Coaching, The Basic Principles"

The second was titled "Basic Soccer Coaching - For coaches, teachers and parents". Many local coaches asked me for copies of the second book that contained some of the coaching grids and several parents and new club coaches asked if there was a book of coaching grids or sessions. In 1997 I wrote to many publishers to see if they would publish my 300 page book but no one was interested so I had the book, as yet not published so I decide to advertise it in the local press and sell it myself. I started with two floppy disks which were sold at sports shops in Perth in a plastic bag, then I got onto email and made a digital copy of the book which sold around the world as 10 attachments. Eventually I copied the book onto CD and distributed this to those willing to pay for it but it was very low key

As time developed I created over two hundred pages of various training grids along with my little player graphics. These I put onto floppy disks (remember them) and advertised a book which I titled “A New Approach To Coaching Soccer, Soccer Coaching Made Easy”

 

In 2000 Then I found the web and put the files onto a web page which I called A New Approach To Coaching Soccer – Soccer Made Easy however another USA company was promoting a book with a similar name

So I changed the title to:- The Essential Soccer Coaching Handbook

This was circulated on the web and several organizations and clubs purchased the book, which was done by giving a password.

The book was sent as email attachments and eventually converted to CD Rom which was packaged and sent to sports shops around Perth. Some of which sold, but most were sold on the internet.

Through advertising on the web I received several hundred requests for the book on CD so these were sent out around the world, I had a really nice letter from Leeds United whom had purchased the CD and found the grids useful.

 

Soccer Coaching Handbook

I never ceased publishing my book but the book structure was disjointed so I re-wrote the book putting grids into folders based on my coaching structure, warm up, ball skills, match practice etc. and whilst doing this I upgraded the graphics added another fifty or so grids and created animated sequences of the grids. But again no one wanted to publish my book so it floated on until I retired in 2010 when I again looked at my book and decided that now was the time to modernize it and bring it up to date, so I added a folder of coaching tools and new graphics (although you may still see some of the old graphics somewhere in the book).

I re-named the book because someone else has taken the name of my original book and it had not been officially published, so now it is called “Soccer Coaches Handbook”

I updated the book over time and in 2005 changed the name to The Soccer Coaching Handbook But being a full time teacher I did not have that much free time.

use 1 or 2 grids

24

use 2 or 3 grids

75

1 or 2 grids

70

use only 1 grid

27

use 1 grid

3

use 1 grid

9

(Used to set up sessions)

23