“It all starts with the pass”
Thurday 15th and Friday the 16th of September saw 25 candidates attending a very succesful delivery by head coach of Cyprus National team Vaggelis Koutouleas at Stirling and Aberdeenshire. The topic was serve receive an area of the game that cannot be practiced (or discussed) enough.
The sessions started with a discussion among coaches, exploring different tactical possibilities on where to pass the ball . Vaggelis referred with example of the recent Olympics games and the reasons that made celebrated national teams to using different systems to maximise their success.
Vaggelis then e
xplained the fact that there can never be a generic passing system, as passers are of dissimilar abilities in every team. It is important to create though a consistent structure that respects ones team strength and weaknesses and practice it thoroughly.
On the practical part, players from Stirling University,City of Edinburgh and Beacon were used as vehicles for learning. It became clearer to the coaches on how to practice passers with rhythm and intensity individually and then as a team. Building a 3 person passing unit lead to game like exercises and the notion of ‘protecting and supporting’ passers who experience difficulty during the game was reinfornced
Feedback received was positive for both the content and the ability of our presenter. Many thanks to all candidates who despite the fact that it was a weekday made the effort to attend . And ofcourse to Vaggelis Koutouleas who shared his knowledge and experience with our coaches with the appropriate tone, if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.One of the candidates wrote:
“I found it really interesting to consider the different options for serve receive line ups in relation to the players you have (playing to your strengths) and the team you are playing against. Additionally, ideas for content for training serve receive systems was really useful”
From my perspective the more coaches with international experience present here in Scotland the more enriched the coaching landscape will be. The world is a book and he who doesn’t travel only reads one page.