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COACHING EDGE |APPROPRIATE COMPETITION|
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|APPROPRIATE COMPETITION| COACHING EDGE
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The controversial subject of just how competitive sport at a junior level should be simply won’t go away, but as Crispin Andrews discovered, the message of ‘appropriate’ competition is gaining traction.
R
emember those sporting encounters with your mates at the local park when you were a youngster?
adults insisting that you grind out a boring draw, when the odds were against you. But things change. Things become ‘formal’ and ‘organised’.
and because of this, talented children aren’t reaching their sporting potential. How because of this, Britain risks losing its competitive edge in years to come. All very serious. Not much fun at all.
For the time you were out there, you played hard, to win, had fun... and lots of exercise. Then you went home, had your tea and perhaps watched your sporting heroes on TV, and wondered why adults sulked for weeks if results didn’t go the ‘right’ way.
Last April, there was a predictable uproar when Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) – the body which used to run world cricket – and the Chance to Shine sports charity released a poll which claimed 64% of school children wouldn’t care if the competitive element was removed from school sport.
Out at the park there were no adults telling you what to do and how to do it. No adults telling you that you were letting your team down if you tried something flash that didn’t come off. No
Out came familiar arguments about how the ‘prizes for all’ culture in school undermined children’s competitive spirit. How competitive sport is frowned upon in many state schools,
Earlier this year, the Rugby Football Union (RFU) hit the headlines for apparently taking winning and losing out of its mini rugby competitions. ‘They’re going soft’, one paper claimed. Here was a sport where top players can’t afford to shirk a tackle and kids are playing games where there’s no point trying to score. But what the RFU was trying to do was take a long-term view in a world of short-term response. If at the end of this sporting summer
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COACHING EDGE |APPROPRIATE COMPETITION|
we had found England had triumphed in Brazil, destroyed India at cricket and trounced New Zealand at rugby, then the stories would have been about our wonderful sporting culture, and how Johnny Foreigner could do much worse than to spend a few weeks over here, learning how to play properly. Conversely,with the outcomes that Roy Hodgson’s side took the first plane home, our rugby players were black-and-blue at the hands of the All Blacks, and the Indian summer was too hot to handle, the sporting commentators told everyone that grass-roots sport needed another overhaul. That youngsters should be thrown ‘in at the deep end’... or, ‘get ‘em working on their skills, young, like they do in Germany’. No competitive matches until they’re at least 16... However, all this sort of talk misses the point. Rather than arguing about whether we should coach sport competitively and put the ‘weaker’ youngsters off, or non-competitively and produce a generation of ‘lily-livered underachievers’, shouldn’t we instead be
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‘Games should be competitive, yes, but children’s competitive, not adult competitive.’ searching for ideas that stretch kids to achieve their best, without alienating those who are less able and less driven? Look under the headlines and beyond the comment columns and this is exactly what both the RFU and Chance to Shine are trying to do. Wasim Khan, chief executive of Chance to Shine, says that competitive opportunities should be part of a youngster’s learning environment and experience. This, he believes, produces better players. Not teaching them to win at all costs. ‘It’s about what the child learns from competing, not just the result,’ Khan says. ‘How do they feel when they win and lose, how do they deal with setbacks, lose graciously.’
Steve Grainger, director of development at the RFU, says that the RFU wants coaches to focus on developing children’s rugby skills and keeping them in the game, rather than training teams to win matches, leagues and cups. ‘We don’t want to see the same kids, the best players, appearing over and over again with some kids not getting game time,’ he says. ‘We want everybody to have a good experience, not just have the biggest, boldest team running through everyone.’ The Football Association is trying something similar with its Tesco Skills programme for under 5s to 11s. ‘Games should be competitive, yes, but children’s competitive, not adult competitive,’ says FA development director, Pete Ackerley.
|APPROPRIATE COMPETITION| COACHING EDGE
‘Would you get a kid to do a Shakespeare play before they could string a sentence together, or read basic words?’
Former Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest footballer, Kenny Swain, now England’s under17 football manager, adds that competitive spirit is only one quality an elite youngster might have. ‘Players come to me with a variety of qualities,’ he says. ‘Some have a winning mentality, some are good at overcoming challenges. Others are good technically or show a desire to improve.’ According to Grainger, games should help young kids learn how to throw, catch, move into open space and understand invasion principles. He explains that in the past, sport has tended to take the adult game and work backwards, rather than take a kid and work forwards. ‘Rather than think what does this kid need to become the best player they can and get the most benefit from playing the sport, we’ve thought about what this kid needs to do to be able to play the adult game,’ he says. ‘Would you get a kid to do a Shakespeare play before they could string a sentence together, or read basic words?’ Khan believe that sometimes, coaches working at grass-roots level get confused about what their role is – winning games, or developing kids. Teachers can help, here; particularly primary teachers. The good ones are experts in mixedability teaching. Instead of having one activity going, they’ll organise a range of activities that target individual ability groups and preferred learning styles. A good primary teacher might have five or six different activities going at the same time.
‘This is what comes natural to kids, to try their hardest when they’re on the pitch, but not to worry so much about winning and points – that’s an adult thing.’ Just like those old games on the local park, then. ‘Most adults we’ve surveyed say competition and winning is important,’ says Grainger. ‘Most kids we’ve spoken to say it’s not.’ Professor Richard Bailey, from Liverpool John Moores University, goes further. ‘It might sound good over a few beers, but there’s not a shred of evidence from anywhere in the world that getting children playing more competitive sport produces elite performers,’ he says. Prof Bailey believes young children need to learn skills in order to be able to compete in a meaningful and beneficial way. ‘Forcing children to compete, without the necessary skills, can damage their self-esteem,’ he adds.
Of course a teacher, or a coach, can’t physically run every game, but that’s a good thing. In a learning environment like this, kids become more responsible for what they do. They use the knowledge the coach imparts to develop their own skills, are freer to try things and make mistakes, without getting picked up on it. You have a group of youngsters who love competition. Fine, give them a match scenario, where they can push themselves for the win. Another few are motivated more by personal improvement. For them, a challenge, or to beat their own best. Some like the aesthetics of getting a skill or movement right. Get them working on their skills, give them a video camera. Encourage the prima donna within. Ronaldo and Virat Kohli don’t do too badly. Swain believes different players develop different attributes over time. According to some pundits, Ross Barkley is the most technically gifted English player since ‘Gazza’. Yet when Swain saw him in the England under-16 team a few years ago, other things stood out about the Everton youngster.
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‘He was a total enthusiast,’ Swain says, ‘a great physical specimen and like all the best midfielders he could score a goal, set up a goal and stop the opponents from scoring a goal. Back then, he was good technically, but not outstanding.’ Look under the headlines and the RFU and Chance to Shine actually agree that grass-roots coaches should be helping kids become the best they can be. ‘This means giving them the sort of enjoyable experience that will encourage them to stay in the game long enough to reach their potential,’ says Grainger. Khan adds: ‘Focus on improving performance, not outcome. Then, more often than not, the result will take care of itself.’ None of this will necessarily get your under-8s team ready for that all-important top-of-the-table clash, or set up the under-12s for a counterattacking, smash and grab, victory. But it could well give you happy kids, determined to improve... at their own pace. Some of them, if they’re talented enough, might turn into the sort of players who, when they’re adults, will have the skills, knowledge and aptitude to respond to the changing demands their coaches place on them. The sort of players who’ll more likely win that top-of-thetable clash, or grind out a draw against more adventurous opposition. Whether it will produce players good enough to beat the All Blacks at rugby, or routinely turn over Germany, Spain and Argentina in future football world cups, also depends on what is going on in those countries. C E
