Last Monday and Wednesday the college was privileged enough to be able
to take students across to St Georges Park.
On Monday 16th September there was 16 students and 22 students on Wednesday 18th September.
We were invited to take students across to take part in the
International Coaches Course. The delegates
are from all over the world and come to St Georges Park to learn how FA Coaching
sessions are delivered and structured.
The delegates came from very diverse backgrounds, although Oscar? Is
worth a mention, he played in 3 world cups for Brazil, being 1978, 1982 and
1986. One Argentine was head of Football
Development for Boca Juniors. “It comes
to something when we are teaching the Brazilians how to Coach Football?”
The Day
Once we’d parked up, we all met in main reception and were
welcomed and shown to a large changing room which had been allocated to NULC
specifically. The lads got changed
quickly before we were escorted to the indoor Astroturf arena. Again, we were met by 3 English FA Coaches
that were all very nice and very approachable and very appreciative of the lads
making the effort. The Coaches explained
how the day was going to work and what was expected of the players.
Basically, our players were going to be coached a specific
Topic of football, this was to show the delegates how to set up the session and
what points needed to be made by the coach to the players.
Each session was structured so that the session always
developed into a game situation, so that the players were able to practice what
they had been working on.
Once the morning session was over we went back to the
changing room were a packed lunch had been prepared for us all. After Lunch had gone down, we were all given
a whistle stop tour of St Georges Park.
This was a real, ‘eye opener’ for the players to see England’s Changing
facilities and the exact replica of Wembley, right down to the last
detail. The facilities are obviously
second to none, but it also emphasized the importance placed on training in
order to succeed.
After the break the lads were back out on the outdoor
pitches for much of the same, but covering different topics. The outdoor pitches were of the highest
quality as you would expect, although still not quite to the standard of
Derek’s, here at NULC.
Overall the lads were very well behaved and very receptive
to the Coach’s needs. The Coaches were
extremely appreciative of the efforts made by the lads. The Staff from St Georges Park stated that
they were keen to continue to develop this relationship with our college and
said that they would inform us of the next event in due course.
Our lads really enjoyed the day, they were all having some
good banter on the way home as they recalled various things that they had
experienced throughout the day.
I heard them saying things like;
“That was awesome”
“I really enjoyed that”
“That was sick”
“Will we get the chance to come to St Georges Again?”
“This isn’t bad for 2nd week in college”
Overall a great couple of days had by all.
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