Coaching Cardiff Celts Reflected

Yesterday was my last match coaching the Cardiff Celts. I feel sad because after all the work I put into the team, I won’t have the opportunity to build upon it for next season. Next season I will be back in London completing my Masters dissertation.

WHAT HAVE I LEARNT?

I learnt many things that have contributed to my coaching philosophy. This won’t be discussed here because this is a performance analysis blog. So what did I learn as a performance analyst?

1. – when I lead my first performance analysis session after the New Year, many of the younger players were confused and/or disinterested. There were many reasons for this but I feel effectively selling and explaining it to the players would have overcome many of those reasons.

2. – one of the things I did was teaching statistics via drills. One simple drill was allowing each player 10 attack attempts and count how many kills or errors they got from it. After their 10 attack attempts, I would bring everybody together and calculate a hitting percentage [H% = (K-E)/TA)] and relate it to what they see in match reports. This would teach players what a hitting percentage is and what a good level of performance is. It would also teach players that they only have a certain number of attack attempts in which they should use wisely.

3. – I learnt that I did not have to produce a detailed opposition scouting report like I did for Dulwich Tuskers. I only needed 1 or 2 points to inform the players and create a simple strategy that was worked on in training. I only did this for the last 2 matches.

WHAT COULD I HAVE IMPROVED?

1. – I did pick out various clips that needed to be worked on but I regret I never really did a team video session. I did several ad-hoc player sessions to show players certain skills but it really wasn’t enough.

2. – this could have been easily done with serve, reception and defence.

3. – sometimes I forget that performance analysis should be player-centred. It is not always about the fancy things I do but what the player and coach gets out of it. Having one-to-one sessions with players would be a direct way of asking them.

FINALLY

I have learnt a bunch of things with Cardiff Celts including the fact that I still love coaching. So I am grateful I had the opportunity to coach them this season and the improvement is certain there to be seen. I will dearly miss the players and people at the club.