Game this Sunday and tips

Hi all,

I have just received the times for our game on Sunday.

Game times: We will play a Manly division-2 side at 10am. Everybody should be there by 9.30am.

Training: It's back to 2pm on Saturday for the forseeable future.

Meanwhile here's a pic taken during a time-out at last week's game.

The boys look pretty relaxed despite the loss, which is a good thing.

To help keep them relaxed and still improve their game here's a simple (almost blindingly obvious) tip that I picked up from a book called The Double Goal Coach by Jim Thompson.

I've tried it with Addam and it really works.

In the book, Jim Thompson reports how a number of highly successful coaches have run what they call a two-minute drill. It’s used mostly when a team is in a slump or playing poorly. You know the kind of game where nothing goes right.

For two minutes the coach looks for genuine positives.

If a player makes a pass that didn’t work but was a good pass, the coach praises them for a good pass. If the players take a good shot, but the shot misses, the coach still calls out good shot. For two minutes every call is positive, (great position under the post, good catch, nice drive whatever you see as long as it is "truthful" praise – false praise does not work)

It’s a case of calling out whenever the players do something well.

The positive feedback lifts the emotions of the players and improves their game. More importantly they also try to repeat the things that got them praise.

Former Stanford women’s tennis coach Frank Brennan, who won 10 NCAA titles, used it on days when practice wasn’t going well. He waited until he found something he could truthfully be positive about. Bit by bit he would move between courts genuinely praising all his players.

"After he finished with the players on the last court, he turned around, and he always found his players transformed, each playing much better than before." (Pg 82).

There's nothing stopping parents extending that drill to an entire game.