Coaching under the right circumstances

17 October 2023

I must confess I wasn’t too sure whether to write this blog post…

It has now been several months since I left Leeds Beckett University Women’s football club.

After 2 full seasons at the club I felt it was the right time to move on for several different reasons. I had originally planned to stay on and coach the first team and even went as far as designing the development programme for the whole club with some help from the former head of football and the coaches at the time.

I spoke previously about my first year in charge of a team, that being the Leeds Beckett University Womens football third team. This blog is going to focus on my second year in management with the first team. 

To provide some context for the step up to the first team, after my first season in charge with the third team the head of football Ruth Brazier organised a meeting with each coach to catch up and find out their plans for next year. I approached this meeting with an open mind, I had originally told Ruth that I would be leaving due to receiving a job offer to manage the u13’s academy team at Kickabout performance centre in Sheffield. However, I had learnt so much that it seemed more beneficial to stay in this environment and perhaps move up teams, this made sense with my plans to study a masters degree at the University.

During the meeting I expressed that I would like to stay, maybe expecting to be asked to coach the second team perhaps, but to my shock Ruth said she wanted me to experience the opposite end after being chucked in the deep end with the third team. This wasn’t set in stone as Ruth was actually leaving but she had put my name forward as she wanted to leave everything in place for the next head of football. I must admit I left the meeting surprised. Prior to leaving Ruth had mentioned that she needed to talk to the other coaches who may also want to step up or coach the first team.

The way things worked out myself and one of my good friends who assisted with the first team were give the roles of joint head coaches of the women’s first team or so we thought.

 After a couple of initial meetings and phone calls trying to get to grips with the idea of managing things as joint head coaches we both came across a job advert for our position!

The role had been put out without any contact to myself or my colleague. After several days of trying to figure out what had gone on we found out that we would have to interview for the role as they wanted higher level coaches – We had never spoken to the lady who put the job advert out nor did she even know our names.

At this point  we had talked about the amount of work we would need to do to prepare the squad for the season and the importance of recruitment, let alone getting used to coaching in a joint capacity and this was all now delayed having to wait for an interview and decision. 

I was at this point hesitant to accept the job should we get it, there was so much going against us in what was already going to be a challenging season. Fast forward a month and a half and we find out we had got the job a whopping 3 weeks before the return. Myself and my colleague talked and decided to take on the challenge. I think we were that relieved we took it without thinking or talking with the lady in charge.

So we are now 3 weeks away from the start of a very short pre season (we hadn’t been able to organise one to start early and for players to get back to Leeds due to not having the job). In this time we have to organise our squad, figure out returns dates, set up trials, figure out how we want to play, get used to coaching with each other, find a third team coach all for a role that pays us less than minimum wage whilst sorting out things in our own lives such as preparing for our masters degrees and sorting out living arrangements.

Our initial problem was getting players back to training from summer as we hadn’t had much contact with them, but before we knew it we had two weeks until trials and 3 weeks until our first game with the 1s. We spent a full day organising trials with the club captain and the set date by the higher ups was a week before our first game. This meant we had to do a training session with the 1s to somewhat prepare and the trials would be left to a single coach. Imagine that, 1 coach to look and assess over 100 players in a week, but it was the situation we had been left in and one we had to work with.

I think its safe to say trails wasn’t the greatest success, by the end of it we took on around 25/30 players across the club and had two new players in the first team in a season where we were meant to rebuild the squad. Things weren’t looking good.

Fast forward four games, we’ve lost all our games which were quite close but we have subsequently lost 3 players who have left for various reasons. At this stage training isn’t the most enjoyable for me, I am starting to feel more and more like an assistant coach which I had suspected might happen being new to the first team set up and in a joint capacity. With everything we had to sort out we hadn’t actually sat down and talked about how we want to play which meant we were bringing different ideas to the table and on the side-line I wasn’t exactly aware of what to say or what I should be looking for.

What followed shortly was my motivation when coaching both at training and matches was at an all time low, I enjoyed the sessions and match days the coaching was lack lustre for myself and I wasn’t getting out of the role what I wanted. My options were to try and provide the best assistance I could or step up and lead, my issue with the latter was I didn’t want to step up and challenge against my colleague who I had respect for and at the same time I didn’t feel like that would do the players any good if we were up against each other, so I did my best to assist.

A month or so later the motivation switched my colleague was struggling and while I wasn’t satisfied I didn’t feel as low as before so I decided to step up. However, I soon realised the biggest issue, we hadn’t really identified how we wanted to play and I myself didn’t know what we were aiming for and so in terms of training and matchdays the information I could pass on was limited.

Is this an issue we overlooked? perhaps but I think when you consider everything we had to work through it was difficult to have time to establish that. We were both masters students alongside this and I ran another Sunday league team as well as my own business so our time was limited. Any time we could dedicate towards the role was taken up by other responsibilities we shouldn’t have had or at least had more time to complete. We were last resort coaches.

What did I realise? 

Whilst I’m not the biggest fan of coaching in a joint manager operation as I believe it requires a massive amount of communication, open mindedness and time this was not the main issue here.

Myself and my colleague did not place ourselves in the right circumstances to coach and be successful. We accepted a role in a short time frame which had many roles and responsibilities we had to complete (due to the head of football not being in place) that forced us to neglect our roles as first team coaches.

While I don’t believe this is our fault, I think it is something we can both take into account when accepting roles in the future.

And so this is the reason I decided to leave my role at Leeds Beckett university despite the utter enjoyment the role gave me and the great relationships I built with the players