A great coach off sick, and a cover coach with no plan
Your head coach plans brilliant sessions. They build a term around themes, progressions and games that suit each age group. The plans are in a notebook and their head. When they are off, or when a new sessional coach takes over a group, the cover coach runs whatever they know, often a match with a warm-up.
Parents notice. A child who was learning to pass under pressure spends two weeks playing matches. A new coach asks what the under-sixes are working on and nobody knows. When you want to show a school or a parent what your coaching programme covers, you do not have a clear answer.
Why quality depends on who turns up
- Plans are personal and not shared.
- Nothing links a plan to a particular group on a particular day.
- Cover coaches find out their group the day before, if that.
- What was covered last week is not recorded, so the next session cannot build on it.
- New coaches learn your approach by shadowing, if there is time.
What uneven sessions cost
Parents choose your academy for the coaching. When quality depends on which coach turns up, families notice and some leave. Children progress more slowly. Good coaches spend time re-explaining the same things to cover coaches.
It also makes growth harder. Every new venue or group needs a coach who can plan well from scratch, and that is the scarcest thing you have.
A shared session plan library
- Your coaches' best plans are brought into one library, organised by sport, age group, ability and theme, with drills, diagrams, equipment and coaching points.
- Plans are grouped into term programmes per group, so each week builds on the last.
- The timetable links each session to the plan for that week, so the coach, including a cover coach, sees it on their phone before they arrive.
- After the session, the coach records in a few taps what was covered and a note on how it went.
- The next coach, or the same coach next week, sees that note with the next plan.
- Head coaches can review notes and adjust programmes, and new coaches have a library to learn from.
| Part | Who uses it | What it gives them |
|---|---|---|
| Plan library | All coaches | Tested sessions by age and theme |
| Term programme | Head coach | A sequence for each group |
| Today's plan | Coach running the session | Plan, equipment and last week's note |
| Session note | Coach | Record of what was covered |
| Review | Head coach | What is working across groups |
The coaching content is yours. We build the library and the links around it, and we do not write coaching plans.
A cover session that follows the plan
When the head coach is off, the cover coach opens their phone on the way to the venue and sees this week's under-sevens plan: the theme, three activities with diagrams, the equipment needed and last week's note saying half the group struggled with stopping the ball. The session builds on last week, and parents see no drop in quality.
New coaches get up to speed faster. Instead of shadowing for weeks before they can take a group, they can read the programme for the groups they will run, see the notes from the last few sessions, and arrive knowing what the children have been working on. The head coach spends their time helping with delivery rather than explaining the basics of each group.
At the end of term, you can show parents and schools the programme each group followed, and the head coach can see which activities worked.
Does session quality depend on the coach?
- Session plans are in individual coaches' notebooks.
- Cover coaches start with no plan.
- Nobody records what was covered each week.
- New coaches learn your approach slowly.
- You cannot show parents what your programme covers.