 So we're due to kick off it in about one minute, so just a quick kind of explanation of what we're going to discuss tonight and how to respond to any things that you're not sure of or any help that you need. I'm going to do a short presentation. This is just to explain a little bit about the coaching manuals philosophy towards player development. Probably not too many surprises for people who've been involved in coaching for a while. People who are new to it will hopefully learn something that they've not heard before. And after the presentation I'll kind of walk through a workflow that I use for helping players and it's something I've been using with the boys that I coach who are now under 13. I've been using it with them since they were six years old. So it's a well tried and tested process that's been developed over quite a long time and has had extremely good results extremely positive results. It's also a process that we've shared with with thousands and thousands of coaches all over the world and we've had lots of very positive feedback. So if you've got any questions ask them in the chat box. I'll record this presentation. I'll record the webinar and we'll make that available to everybody who attends tonight. I'm also more than happy to share the presentation that I'll walk through so no need to take pictures or record the screen will share everything that we go through tonight. So just for those who are joining us now, but it's time to kick off just a quick introduction again my name is Terry Barton. I'm head of product development and head of research and development at the coaching manual and top techers and also football coach. And this evening we'll walk through what play development is in very brief terms how things are changing in the modern world. And how technology can facilitate education specifically skill acquisition. And, and some of the lessons I suppose that we've learned as we kind of hopefully come out of the COVID pandemic now. So, play development for the coaching manual really boils down to three key things that we that we kind of stick to. And you could call these our philosophy, if you like, and I'll give a little bit of explanation about why we think these things are so important. And this is how we approach education for every session that we deliver so every, everything that we create has this in mind underneath all of our activities underneath the, the, the things that we provide for coaches to help them kind of progress with their coach education. This philosophy really underpins everything that we do so. The smiling is obvious we want players to enjoy the sessions that they do. Learning, we really do stand by the, the idea that every single session that a player attends should present them with the opportunity to learn at least one thing. And sweating is another part of our philosophy football is a physical game is physically demanding. It's the kind of the major team sports it's the most physically demanding in terms of things like distance covered a number of sprints and the amount of high quality running that's required to do the game. So, when we put sessions together, or when we're out on the field coaching players, and these are the things that we'd like to, to focus on. The three things here are quite, they don't always go together. We want children to enjoy themselves, but working hard physically isn't always enjoyable for people so we've got to find ways to make sure that we still fulfill that objective of having hard work and at the same time for children to enjoy that. Learning isn't always straightforward for children, it can be frustrating, it can be frustrating for players, it can be frustrating for coaches, and we've got to make that enjoyable. The learning can sometimes be stop start so it doesn't always necessarily feel like it goes hand in hand with with working hard. So getting the balance of these three things whilst they look fairly straightforward on the surface does take a decent amount of skill and a decent amount of concentration and focus from a coach when trying to deliver coaching sessions or deliver soccer education to children. The one that most people probably focus on is the smiling part, the enjoyment part, and that runs the risk I think sometimes of people ignoring the fact that you are there to try and help people learn, and you're also there to help children work hard, get fit, and be part of that process. Just to reiterate, I've got a raised hand I think, but if you've got questions, if you could ask them in the chat or in the Q&A then we'll do what we can to respond to those as quickly as we can. So the smiling part, the fun part is the thing that we probably focus on and actually lots of people say the game has to be fun. My argument for that is the game is fun. You don't need to make it fun. Football is an extremely enjoyable game and that's one of the key reasons why it's the most popular team sport in the world. It's because it is fun by its very nature. So if we focus less on the idea that we have to make it fun and we have to do things that we think are going to be fun for players and focus more on the outputs of learning and the physical development, then fun will always fit in as long as long as we get the other things right. So what do we kind of need from players? What do we need for players to demonstrate when they're a footballer? They need technical ability, that's a given. Most of these will relate to the four corner model. Players have to be able to do what they want to do with the ball. So whatever they're intending to do, we would want them to have the technical ability to do that. Now it's not a straight line for learning for things like this because there are lots of complicated elements of the game, which is why when we start with young children, we're working on very basic fundamental movements. And as we get older and older, we open the areas out, we make more demands of those techniques. Physical ability, as I mentioned, it's a physical sport. You have to be fit to play it well, but even if you're not playing at a high level, there still is going to be quite a lot of running involved in playing the game. So it's a demanding sport in that regard and making sure that people are physically capable of performing what's required in the sport will ultimately make the game more enjoyable, as will the development of technical ability. They need to understand how the game works. We need players to recognize what's happening in the game and react to those different moments so that they can make the right decisions at the right time. And again, you can play the game for a lifetime and you still get things wrong. So we're not expecting anybody to get all of these things to be perfect. But these are the things that you need to understand from a play development perspective, when we're trying to create to create footballers. Communication really relates to the social side of the game in some regards, but having players who are confident enough to talk each other through the game to communicate with their teammates allows them to work as a team. If they don't communicate, if they don't help each other through the game, then it does very quickly become a game of a bunch of individuals playing their own thing. So technical, physical, tactical and communication, fairly common themes within coach education. So what's number one? What do we think is number one? I don't think it's just us. I think that throughout the whole of the football spectrum, most people will identify that this one at the top is the most important part of the game. I like to think of technique as being the skeleton key of the game. And what I mean by that is that good technique unlocks all of the other possibilities that the game has. You can be physically super fit. You can be very intelligent. You can be have great game understanding. You can see things that you should be trying to do. You can be a great communicator. But ultimately, if you don't have the ability to perform those techniques at that moment in the game, then the game becomes very frustrating very quickly. You get frustrated. Your teammates get frustrated. Your coaches get frustrated. So technique really does unlock the game. And technique is complicated. It's a game that's played with pretty much every part of the body apart from the arms unless you're a goalkeeper. So you are using parts of the body where the coordination between the brain and the parts of the body you're using isn't every day in commonplace like it is with hand-eye coordination. So we have to develop this technique over a long period of time and we have to build this technique slowly. And it starts really with the fundamentals at a young age. So Arsene Banger gave us a good quote about technique, the idea that between the age of seven and fourteen, so obviously Banger comes from a scientific background. So he understands the idea of myelination or the formation of myelin sheath around nerves and how that speeds up the processes, the messages that get sent between the brain and the different parts of the body. It is a key age for this to happen, but it's not the only age that it happens at. So I understand the sentiment of what Arsene Banger says here. The idea that if at the age of 14 you haven't got the technical skills, you can forget it and you'll never be a football player, I think has actually changed in the past 15 to 20 years. And the evidence that we see from youngsters in modern development would suggest that it is and has changed significantly. And that really comes down to modern life. And this is something that we have to take into consideration when we're thinking about how we're developing children, how quickly they are expected to develop. And what the outcome is going to be from our perspective to help them get to the to fulfill their potential. So there's a number of polls that have covered this topic over the over the past 10, 15 years. You've got poll in the UK found that children spend half as much time outside compared to the parents from 20 years prior. So children in the 1980s were spending around 20 hours a week outdoors playing, having fun, playing games, much of which in this part of the world would have been football. In 2016, we found that the players were spending around 10 hours outside. And actually children playing sports on the decline. The Aspen Institute did a study in 2019 as part of their state of play report and found that between 2012 and 2019 is about 5% decline in participation in sport. So our expectation that children are going to have the same level of technical ability now has got to change because they just simply don't have the access to the opportunities to practice that one's had. So this is where we can start thinking about how can technology feed into this process. How can they, how can they, how can technology support us as coaches. It's, it's, it's something that is quite important, had an interesting question already about motivation and technical ability and tactical ability. And I will come to that actually, but very soon in the presentation here. So we have to change. I've put an image of children playing computer games, my son's in the next room and he's doing exactly that right now. However, he's been, he's played probably two hours of sport after school this evening so I'm not too concerned. But there are so many more influences in their child's life so we've got to find ways to kind of overcome that. We can't expect to put that genie back in the bottle. It's not going to happen. We have to understand that we have to change our approach to skill acquisition, technical development, sports development in order to not combat the modern life but actually just to just to help children get to to their full potential. So technology can be used in lots of different ways. Obviously there's lots of technologies that we can use to track physical performance. We can stick GPS trackers on people now we can put devices into smartwatches. We can put trackers on boots. There's lots of ways for us to improve, improve that element of the game, understanding the physical nature of it. Although, I would argue that most people who you can interpret that data probably do need to have some kind of qualification to do so. And technical development is a little bit harder and tactical and technical understanding of the tactical and strategic understanding of the game is something that we can only really teach by being good coaches. So that really kind of talks about how does this process work from a development perspective. So there's lots of myths that kind of have propagated over the years. I put a suggestion of a small selection of them here. And I'm sure that most people will be aware of these things although they'll have heard them mentioned so one of the oldest kind of lines that people have said is let the game be the teacher. Now when I was a child in the 1980s absolutely I was I was playing football and before school at school and then after school when I was seven years old because I was allowed to go to school on my own as a child. That doesn't happen anymore schools because of safeguarding don't allow kids to play sport around the school bell so in modern society in the modern world children don't have the opportunity to go and play with their friends as much as they did 20 or 30 years ago, so they don't have the opportunity for the game to be the teacher. So when we're trying to teach the understanding of the game and when we're trying to teach technique, it really does become a responsibility of the coach to be the teacher. Organized coaching is is much more common now than it was in the past. And that's probably one natural kind of response to the fact that kids just don't play as much. So we put them into structured sport. Well, if we put them into structured sport, then we have to make sure that we provide them with the structure that's going to help them learn. And that's where understanding good sessions and putting good practices on can really can really help us. Unopposed individual practices outdated so there is a school of thought from from certain people who say that that people should only practice things within the game. Well the game, we all know you touch the ball very little in a game. So there aren't that many opportunities to practice in the game itself. If we're focusing on technique and we're focusing on one touch passing or two touch passing on control or anything like that, then we have to practice those things in isolation so that we can perform them in the game. Now every single development model in the world encourages us to use ball mastery and ball manipulation with youngsters, because we all know that repetition of those techniques helps to improve their ability to perform them correctly. But following that logic, then it makes absolute sense that all of the other techniques that we require players to be able to perform should also be practiced in that way, so that kids can develop the skills can learn how to do those different actions how to move their bodies, how to control the ball, how to understand space, but practicing it on their own. Not preferably not in a coaching session, because if we're spending lots of time teaching children how to do basic moves in the coaching session, then we are losing that opportunity to teach them the, the tactical side of the game. But certainly at younger ages, there's absolutely no harm in just helping kids at the start of every session focus on technique, whether it is passing, whether it's shooting, whatever it is, techniques should be a part of, I would argue, every single training session that people do. I coach on the 13s and I do the first 15, 20 minutes is almost entirely technique. And there's no reason why we can't continue to do that up until 1415. In fact, if we look at the professional game for advice, we'll see that the vast majority of professional footballers also focus on technique at the beginning of practice. The technique in pairs, it's not with opposition, it's just getting used to the ball. And so that's a myth that we kind of need to kind of dispel and understand that children will not learn those techniques in the game because they will simply not get the opportunity to. The big one for coaches is winning. The big one for kids is winning. Kids love to win. You know, I've had to deal with it, the kind of the output of losing games and no child likes to lose, no coach likes to lose. But winning doesn't define success. Many people think that the God given reason that they were put on a pitch to coach children is to help them win. Well, yeah, potentially, when they're 15, 16, 17 and winning does become more important and they're in leagues and they're in divisions and they're in cups. Yeah, winning does become important. As I said, nobody likes to lose, but there's a real risk at younger ages where winning kind of trumps development. So a good example, and it's an example that I've seen commonly over the time that I've been coaching is a fast powerful player who's who plays as a forward, a big strong boy as a goalkeeper or as a or as a defender, who can launch the ball up the pitch. The fast boy can chase the ball, can score a goal, works probably 80% of the time when you're coaching 7B7. Great tactic. If you want to win, just lump the ball up, let the fast kid chase it, let him put the ball in the back of the neck. He's so strong. The other kids who aren't quite as physically developed as him can't do anything about it. The problem with that is that you're not developing the other players in between those two. The midfielders who you want to be able to receive the ball and move the ball quickly and with purpose up the pitch, that just won't happen. So it always comes back to bite you. We play in a local league where teams have been playing with each other for five, six years. So we've played the same opposition time and time again with the same sets of players and you see it when you coach. The teams who do that, the teams who have that kind of approach to winning at seven years old or eight years old, well, at 13 years old, they're not winning because they don't have the tactical ability to actually play the game properly. And that old tactic of launching the ball when people have started to catch up physically just stops working. So technical development and how do we motivate children? It's a challenge because people are at different levels of development. Confidence is a massive thing for children. Practice is a really important part of it. And the thing that kind of brings those two things together is success. So confidence, there's lots of research into this. Confidence is generated by people who practice something and have success at it. So if you're working with children who are very basic in their technical development, there's no point asking them to do something that you know is going to be too complicated for them. You have to start at the beginning in some cases. And if you're coaching six-year-olds or seven-year-olds, you'll probably see this more commonly. There might be the odd one who you think, wow, he's so good, but I can guarantee that that kid is self-motivated already and probably practices all the time. They're not the ones that we need to worry about too much in development. It's those ones who aren't self-motivated who don't have the confidence to do that work on their own. So by giving them activities that they can see progression in, that they can see success from, that then starts to build that confidence. So there's no point looking at what an academy player from Manchester United can do at nine years old and expect your nine-year-olds to do that because they won't have the same level of technical ability. And if you put that expectation on kids and ask them to do something that they can't do, well, they won't get success and then they won't build confidence. So getting the balance right is really important from a technical development perspective. Start with something that they can work on and improve at. Praise them for doing well at it and watch their confidence grow. Good habits is something that we all want to develop in children, whether it's towards homework, whether it's towards sport, whether it's just towards life in general. And one of the things that football gives us is the ability to create brilliant human beings because we give them good habits, we give them high standards and we give them praise for when they do things right. But it's really hard work to create people who are self-motivated. I won't go into the science behind it and I've put a really rudimentary equation together here. If we combine a structure with some objectives and we give children praise and then we add the secret ingredient of competition, then that will eventually start to drive motivation, or more importantly, start to drive self-motivation. So what we're talking about there is children who take their own responsibility for practice because they see that they're getting better. They meet their objectives, they have a structure, they receive praise for it or they receive some recognition for what they're doing and that drives them to become self-motivated. Very basic, but the three things on the top, the four things rather, structure, objectives, praise and competition, they're really things that come from outside. They're things that we can help with as coaches, that parents can help with, that teammates can help with and more importantly, that technology can help with. The motivation is an internal factor and that's ultimately what we're trying to build with players. So we give them activities that they can do, we put them into league tables where they can compete with their teammates and then we give them a chance to improve and get better. Okay, so that's kind of the first kind of part of the presentation done. I've put some appendix in here as well, which has got a bit of the other information about what I'm going to talk about and we'll get to that in a moment. So I'm just going to stop sharing this and then I'm going to go into sharing kind of my process, how I work through some of these things that I'm talking about and how I support coaches who are doing something similar. So if I just share my screen, I'm going to show you first into my coaching manual platform. I'm going to talk about top techers in a moment, but the coaching manual is a tool to educate myself, but more importantly, it's a tool to educate my players. So I've set up a structure for my players, which I've had for them since they were six years old, and that's driven first and foremost by the activity that we're doing every week at training. So I have a plan, I have a structure, and because I've got all of my team inside the platform with me, and I've given them all access to it so that they've got access to everything that we do, then I've got all of the information is accessible to them as well. So every week they know, and I know what we're doing at training. So simply, they watch the session, they watch the video, they read the plan, they see the objectives. I'm working with under 13s now so it's a bit more complicated. And going back to that question about how do we get technical and tactical development. Well, tactical development for me didn't start with these boys until they were under 11 under 12. Prior to that very little tactical development, most of it was technical, because with a good technical foundation, as Arsene Wenger was saying, you can build the tactical understanding, tactical understanding probably comes after under 11 under 12. Certainly when they get into 11 aside football under 13, that's when you really start to layer in the tactical understanding, focus on technique, get that part right. The tactics actually becomes a lot easier, as I'm finding now so they watch the, they watch the, they watch the session I know they've gotten in the session brilliant. And we don't have much time on the pitch anymore. As I said in the presentation time is precious. So I've got to make the most use of the time that I've got. And this does create one thing which I guess most people get a little bit wary of which is preparation work for the players so how do I, how do I prepare my players. So let's go into the folders on here just just bear with me. So I go into the folders that I've got on the platform, I built this myself. We build this for clubs. And I'll show you kind of through the process that I've developed so I have loads of different folders contained within my account which I've given access to all of the players so in each folder I've shared that with with my Titan so they've got access to the same folder structure that I've got. Now within the player education folder. There are things that we can I can use to help with preparation this week. So we're working on playing through the thirds. So I'm going to go and have a look into the game folder and let's have a look at content I think will be relevant to them. Well playing between the lines is going to be important for that. So that's probably an article that I've saved. So what I've done in this this other document is just kind of just to explain what the process looks like. I've structured all of the content that I want to use from a player and a team education perspective, and I put it into a format that actually any of you can use as well so if anybody wants access to folders so they can set this up themselves probably take you about 30 minutes. And we can do it we do it in the kind of the back end of the system but we've also made this functionality available for people who do it so I've built my folders already. But I'm going to do my match prep my training preparation for the week so I'm going to just copy that cell. I'm going to go back to the beginning of my folders and I'm going to create a new folder, and I'm just going to call it preparation 2511. Then I'm going to share that folder with my team so that they get that folder. Then I go back into my document and I'm going to open up the first article which is playing between the lines. So I want to add that to my folder so that I've got that ready. And then I'm going to go and open up the other piece of content. So this is receiving on the back foot to pass. So this is a one to one activity they can do at home with mom with dad with with a sibling, but this is just a simple activity to focus on the technique that we're going to be working on in the game. So I'm going to add this into my folder as well for them for the prep for the week. And then the last bit that I'm going to add in is transition from defense to attack so when we're playing through the thirds. I'm assuming that we're coming from the back and we're moving forward. So I'm going to share an infographic with the players that they can read about how to transition from defense into attack. So this is their folder now that's been shared with the team. I can see that that contents there so I can say to the boys right. You know what the session is this week. And I've created the preparation folder for the week, go and have a look at that. They also get the match reports that I create within the platform each week so if there's learning elements that have been included from the week, then that will be in there as well. So they've got the folders. They've got their preparation folder. And importantly, they've also got all of the information that they need for different skills, one to one skills, ball mastery skills, different strength and conditioning, new guides on nutrition, game understanding so the tactical part of it. Now these boys are on the 13s now so maybe this isn't something that you do with with real youngsters. But as they get a bit older. I'm kind of saying to them look boys you need to put in more effort outside of training to understand the game better to be technically better so that when we come to training. I'm not spending all my time teaching you technique or spending all my time teaching you how the practice works. I want to fill in the gaps in your knowledge about how to make the right decisions at the right times. So that's why I use this fabulous learning opportunity for me as well, because I've got to kind of go through this information, make sure it makes sense, and often remind myself of things that are relevant as well. So, I've got my kind of first part of my workflow setup. Like I said, takes about half an hour for a coach to set a workflow like this up. Once it's done, it's there for you for as long as you want, you can add and you can remove things you can create your own stuff, and you can start to build out your own kind of educational philosophy that grows with you that grows with your players so if you're working on 11 for 11, you can add all of the different formations in there. We've played this season already in three different formations. And again, development. I'm not saying that kids stay in one position. I'm not staying saying that we stay in one formation, because I want my kids and want my players to be able to do lots of different things in football and not become rigid. So I want them to understand how to be creative, how to recognize what's happening in the game and how to be flexible in how they approached it. So that's my part of the coaching manual done for them. They've got the session, they've got the little bits of reading that I want them to do with a bit of one to one practice. What I also do is I'll take them into what they're going to do for the technical development of the week. So I've filled in the kind of some one to one technical stuff that they can do with their mates, but I've got them in top techers. So I've got my team in here. I can keep a record of what they're doing and how they're progressing. So we have some really good performers and some really good practices. Those boys who have developed that self motivation, I can really start to identify the ones who aren't self motivated through this, which is great. But I've got my playing through the third session. So what I've done is I've created the team, how I've created the team in top techers is that I've got them all connected. I've gone and I've invited the parents in and, you know, just add them in via email and add them to my team so that my players are all in there. So I've got my team set up. I can add a team if I wanted to and put a new one in, but I've set my titans up. Now we're working this week on playing through the thirds. So I've added very specific training activities, which are going to be important for that speed of movement, speed of passing. The other thing that I should probably add into this is I'll add some turning. So I just go and add some other activities. I'll add the outside hook turn, because that's really common when you're trying to play through. And let me add a control as well, so that we can work on some control as well. So if the ball's coming to them in the air, they've got the control. So now what I've got is I've got a technical learning plan that I say to the boys, right. You've got the stuff on the coaching manual, go and watch it. That's 20 minutes of your time on a Sunday afternoon, so that you're ready for Wednesday when we train. You've got some activities and some reading, which is maybe another 20 minutes of time. And then I've created some activities in here, which you can go and work on individually so they can go and take these, go and watch the skills videos and take the challenges so that they're doing technical work away from the training ground. Now, it's not going to work just on its own by me saying, hey, I'm your coach, I'm telling you what to do. There has to be this element of competition, especially for my boys who are under 13s, the kind of on the brink of getting a little bit old for top techers. So that's why I'm introducing them more and more into more tactical things inside the coaching manual, but competition still drives them and still they want to be the best. So if I want to look at how they've been performing over the over the past couple of days, I can quickly apply those filters so I can see who's been busy in the last couple of days. So since I created this plan, I can see that the players are already starting to respond, which is brilliant. Some of them haven't yet so I can give them a bit of a kick up the backside. We've got a game on Sunday so we've kind of done our match prep for Sunday so I'm already looking ahead to next week. Now I could react to the Sunday game and say I'm going to do a different session, but typically I don't, especially at this time of year, when there's all sorts of different factors that play into performance, the surface conditions, the weather. I might kind of stick to the plan over the winter because I don't have much time so I'm trying to make sure that I provide them with the structure but I can see that Connors at the top. I can give the boys a quick kind of say, you know, Connors at the top, who's going to win the competition this week, but I've got that competition. So this week, you know, they get a packet of match attacks or something like that as a reward for practicing so whoever wins it gets a reward as well from me. So definitely worth getting parents to buy into this because I can see what the players are doing. I can have a look more individually at players. I can go in and kind of see with a bit more granular detail around what they've been doing. So I can have a look, for example, at this player and I can see, okay, his progression has been pretty solid. He's got good stats, good performance, achieving goals. He's our top performer, so well done to him. He's flying through it and he's winning lots of different trophies to do that. But it's kind of me, I have to engage as a coach and I think we all have to engage as a coach if we want our players to maximize their potential. I would love to have a team of players who I don't need to do anything for because all they do morning, noon and night is eat, you know, sleep and play football. But that just isn't the society that we're in. They spend an awful lot of time playing FIFA. So this is just something to kind of give them motivation to do something around that. That's kind of my workflow in a nutshell. Session first, homework to go with the session, if you like, technical and tactical development alongside some physical development. And then in relation to the actual session that we're doing some very focused technical development skills to help them do stuff that's going to help them improve in the game. So it's a workflow that's worked incredibly well. I'd say I'm fortunate, but the players that I work with from the age of seven when some of them could barely put one foot in front of the other, now are technically a very, very capable team, capable of playing two and three and four, capable of understanding space, capable of controlling the ball under all conditions. And that is all down to the fact that they built a really solid foundation of technique. Now, what's my overall objective for this group of players. And that's the ultimate kind of goal of player development, if you like, where do we want these kids to go. I live in south of Manchester. I've got Manchester United on my doorstep. I've got Liverpool just down the road. I've got Manchester City. Well, you know what, I'd love my players to all become professional footballers, but that is just such an unrealistic expectation that I don't even entertain it. If I'm honest, my only hope and my only objective for these boys is that when I bump into them in 15 years time and they've been to university and they're working, that they tell me that they're still playing football on a Saturday. Because it is a game that gave me so much throughout my early adulthood and well into my 30s when I continued playing until my knees finally did give up on me and I had to stop playing 11 aside on a Saturday, but I still play. I play five aside and things like that. But my objective is is yes, we've got objectives to get help kids get into college. We've got objectives to try and get kids into professional or semi professional football. That is really, really high expectations. And when you're working in grassroots, the reality of that is very, is very unlikely. And actually, I think the satisfaction of it's also unlikely because they'll get taken off you at 1230 and you'll never see them again. So my objective is just, can I please have these boys still playing football when they're in the 20s. And that's the kind of focal point of their week they spend a week at work they go off to live in London or New York or wherever. But they're going to join a local football team and play as far as I'm concerned job done. And it's a development process for me that is, you know, 15 16 years in the in the making, probably will will, you know, not really see the, the full effects of that until later in my life. But that's my objective anyway. But development for football is is, and that's what it's about it's about developing a passion for the game, developing the passion for practice, because players do drop out and there's an awfully high percentage of players that drop out. Now, almost all of the players who drop out of the game drop out because they stop enjoying it. Now, if you've got a good physical platform and you've got a good game understanding platform. Great, but if you don't have that technique, then the likelihood is that when the game becomes more complicated and you can't execute things that you want to do course you're going to stop enjoying it we all get frustrated. And that's why techniques so important because that's fundamentally for me. That's what keeps people in the game is their ability to actually perform the tasks that their brain is telling them they want to perform. And the more that they do that if they get that right 60% of the time. And guess what we're going to stay playing the game for as long as they can because it's enjoyable. And I'll go through any other questions now because that's kind of the end of what I was talking through. I hope it's been insightful. I'll more than happy to share my my contact information if people want to ask me direct questions. I'm going to share the presentation that I did as well. It's got some of the information in there to support the to support the kind of the things that we're talking about so some links and things like that are in there. So physical ability. I'm going to answer one more question because I kind of touched on it and lacking in physical ability. Technical and tactical ability can't be utilized so disability football. I'm not saying that this is a case of that but there are lots of reasons why people don't aren't there physically. It's really tough at young ages, because I know because my son was born right at the end of the year in terms of development so he was at seven years old he was almost a year younger than some of his teammates. So he had a year's left less growth and development and maturity, and it's been a real battle not just from a physical perspective from an emotional support perspective. And I focused just on technical stuff with him just on ball mastery control, even in isolation and that's me as his dad, just trying to help develop that technique because you know what, for the vast majority of people eventually they catch up. Eventually their physicality changes and they will catch up. And if you if they don't have that technical base when that happens, then they'll exit the game. So if you can teach them, even if it's basic rudimentary ball mastery and we have some kids still in the under 13s in the lower group in the age group that I coach that are pretty new to the game we've got got kids who joined us in the summer who'd never really played football before. So we've gone right back to almost as if they were under eight and we're doing basic ball mastery. The good thing is that they learn quickly so they're at a good age to pick that stuff up quickly, and the progression that they've made has been incredibly rapid. So, focus on the real basics with kids who don't have that physical ability give them some success in the technical side of the game so that they get that confidence is what I would say, give them that and then keep working on that keep giving them that confidence keep giving them that confidence and just at some point the physical side of it will catch up. And do you know what, put sessions on where you have to run, and don't do too much talking, even if that is a 15 minute arrival game and you put them in, they just have to run, make the pitch a bit bigger. Lots of things you can do, but don't force it. There's a great piece of advice from a coach recently talking about match day. There's an article on on the platform about the match day. And the advice I got from him was, don't criticize somebody for their character. So, if somebody's not working hard, don't stand on the sidelines on a coaching session or on a match day saying, you're not working hard enough, because it's it's criticizing their attitude to it is criticizing the their love of the game and the reason that they're there. And I was guilty of it all the time of telling kids they're not working hard enough that they're not getting stuck into challenges that are not being brave enough. And about two months ago changed my approach on match day changed my approach in coaching, and it's been a revolution so you constantly learn, try new things out and see what works with those kids who are struggling, just keep encouraging them. Find something that they have success at and keep them getting better at it and then that will gradually build that motivation for them to just keep improving and improving. It's not going to work for everybody, but for the vast majority it will. So thank you everybody for joining us tonight. We'll share the recording. We'll share the presentation. Oh, one more. So and with regards to the cost for top techers. We've changed things slightly so on the document that I've created, we've put yeah the websites kind of changed and we've gone mobile only. But I've we've got in the in the presentation I've done there's a link about a team plan that we've done for top techers, which brings the cost right down. You can choose how many players you want and let us know. The cost is something that parents may may resist. But it's a great coaching tool. It's going to help their kids get better. It's a good use of technology. If you can't do it that way and then try that I don't know what age they are but try the coaching manual. Like I said with the with the the the content in in the coaching manual. There is an awful lot of information inside the platform that's that's also useful for that exact reason for that. You know for that that to teach them skills and to give them the give them the confidence to go and practice there's all of this ball mastery stuff. There's loads and loads of stuff that they can just watch and learn from and one to one skills training where they can get mom and dad involved and stuff like that so just persevere. And just persevere and when we send the presentation have a look at it. Thank you everybody. Thanks and under nine perfect for them know under get them. Try and get them to watch a couple of the sessions if you can and just give me a shout and I'll let you know some of the stuff that's free so that they can just access it. And just see how it affects your training session but yeah top tech is is great and made a lot of improvements to it so yeah keep keep going with it. Thank you everybody. Keep coaching, keep doing this amazing job, whether you're a volunteer or a paid coach. It's frustrating. I've been frustrated, especially at the younger ages because I didn't think I was making any progress. What I can say is that it just gets better and better and better coaching kids and now that my boys are under 13s and that they're in secondary school. The development of their personalities the development of their football the development of their team ethic is just absolutely amazing and I'm so glad I stuck at it. Because it's so much more rewarding the longer you do it so well done everybody stick at it and thank you very much for joining us this evening. Take care.