writing | sportslaureate

Goodbye, it is, to most of that – most of that cricket, in any event. Age, infirmity and *life choices* have pointed me towards part-time work, but “my god” (as Sean Kelly might say) it hasn’t felt like that.

Selection sessions, winter nets then a belter of a summer on junior pathways: seeking ‘extras’ here and there to top up the dollars supply. Still loving it and still feeling like I can relate (and make a meaningful contribution) despite the swathe of geological time between me and The Lads – and it has mostly been lads. Overnighters at Brecon and Aber – the latter still amongst my favourite sporting gambols – and tremendously disparate match days or squad days from April to late August.

Objective A, as always, to make these wee humans fall in love with the idea (the need!) to move, commit, to ‘look after their mates.’ Objectives B-Z around feeding their sense that this charging about is fabulous and natural and must be an enriching, evolving, lifelong way of being. So in this cricket-thing, be a better bowler – I hope I can help; I have questions. And be a better batter (I hope I can help, but show me what you got). And be quicker and more attentive and more agile in the field – this will help with everything. Being active helps with everything.

Not sure if I’ve chosen to be the guy who is friendly and daft, who works at or close to the entry-level for hard-ball cricket, or if that niche chose me. (Every year I coach various age-groups but overwhelmingly the earthlings in front of me are 10 or 11). Am neither frustrated nor intimidated by the idea that *therefore* maybe I don’t work in Performance Sport. (Partly because maybe I do?) And, despite being mid-spectrum between clown and instructor I am deeply conscious of the responsibility coaches at this stage hold, towards supporting confidence in those who may often be shit-scared of the ball. I’ve had a fifty-year love affair with the feel of a new cricket ball but few juniors aged 10 remain unintimidated by that sacred nut. They know it hurts – or can do. And that fear (of course) makes getting hurt a whole lot more likely.

But in my entire coaching career – I dunno, thirty-odd years, now? – I have only seen two or three players genuinely hurt by the ball. One, perhaps inevitably, got an ‘egg’ above his temple; another an extreeeemely sore shin. No broken fingers or hands. Plenty scuffed or grazed elbows and knees… but ver-ry few injuries down to the pill itself. Loads of theatrical falls-after-the-event – and this maaay bee increasing, for which I blame Premier League footballers. It may well be politically incorrect to talk of ‘drama queens’, these days, but we are seeing some of that, for sure.

Kids are great though, eh? Still mad; still frantic or wonderfully free; still eating crap and listening less than you’d like.

Feeble digression – because it meant quite a lot. A young female coach recently told a small group of us coaches at a particular festival that she’d never seen kids listen like my group listened to me. I was touched by that. Hope it’s because I’m keeping it simple enough, appropriate enough: suspect it’s also because there’s always a joke – a giggle – in the pipeline. But yeh. I was touched by that.

Kids are great. Be honest, you want to run on and punch them when they get The Wildest of Run-outs *after wickets have been tumbling* but it happens. When the universe is screaming JUST HOLD and the coach is preaching calm and concentration. It happens because 10 year-olds are particularly (though not exclusively) vulnerable to Psychotic Contagion and they do ridicu-stuff when stressed. It’s bloody frustrating but also fabulously fascinating how often young players march out there, often too quickly, bat in hand, before succumbing to The Most Reckless Shot in Living Memory – a shot they’ve resolutely put away through 14 weeks of winter training then two spookily encouraging squad days. But the moment comes and they kinda want it over, one way or another*. They swish. And it is over.

(*Apologies to regular readers. Have repeatedly described this moment in the same or similar way. But it does fascinate me. And it does feel like they want it over).

The frequency of this event is startling and rich. That volume speaks to the power of the scrambled mind – across sports, across life. I love that one of the jobs for any coach/mentor/teacher (different roles, I appreciate) is to reconcile that sensational and cruel interface between a moment’s anxiety and the expression or execution of a skill.

It’s theoretically possible for a coach to be life-changing around this; by being sensitive to a player’s frailty (or otherwise) and providing a lead, a word and/or an environment which mitigates against ‘mind-less failure’ and towards confident execution. Mostly, in my experience, we fail, in the sense that our players continue to get out, with nerves being central to the dismissal. But supporting the player, building the environment, reinforcing the necessary skills can and does impact upon this – positively. ‘Grown-up’ players often reflect on how enjoyable and supportive their early experiences in the game are… and how important a particular coach was, in a) instilling or inspiring confidence and b) (therefore) kickstarting a journey they now know will be decades long. So go find me a job that’s more rewarding than that.

When not coaching I’ve been playing or travelling to play. Hilarious, given my age. But Seniors Sport – Seniors Cricket – *really is* a thing and I’m privileged and proud to have fallen into it.

I had almost no adult playing career because football, family life and work obscured that possibility. So I’ve been playing catch-up for the last three seasons, often alongside really good players who have had (I kid you not) half a century of Proper Cricket. I loved bowling as a kid and I still do: I’ve come back to it. Part of me still thinks I’m John Snow – or maybe Mike Hendrick, a less combative sort, from memory. I ‘run in’, or more exactly perhaps, I have failed so far to capitulate to bowling the leg-spin I know (actually) I could bowl. Because I love the feeling of a new cricket ball in my hand. I like and maybe even want the challenge of bowling the first over.

Mostly I’ve done okay, for mighty Llanrhian CC and for Wales 60s 3s and 4s. Unsurprisingly, I’m kinda play-cricket averse (us old guys know when we’ve bowled ok, yes?) so I’m not gonna quote stats at you. There have been highs and lows, including scrambling the winning run off the last ball of a 45 over semi-final game for Wales and then losing in the last over the following week(!) (Took three wickets in that final but was disappointed to concede significantly more runs than I would have liked. But hey, that’s sport. Kent were good and it really could have gone either way).

Enjoy my club cricket at an especially idyllic, mad-rural club but have found the camaraderie (and yeh, the craic) with Wales Seniors to be a revelation. So much so that at some stage I will surely write about it. Said it many times to many people over the last year or two but I’ve played a lot of sport: never enjoyed any of it as much as I’ve enjoyed the games with our posse of Superannuated Taffs. It’s a brotherhood I’m proud and privileged to belong to.

I’m not normally disposed to equivocation or blandness, I hope. But loyalty towards The Mob – and even towards people or policies that (ahem) challenge or trouble me – will mean that the following lacks the kind of candour that I might unleash in a year or two’s time, when I dip out of this coaching malarkey. For now, I still love it and mightily respect colleagues on the pathways that I have been working on. Anyhow: hope these generalities aren’t toooo lame…

Top Man asked recently how many years I’ve been active on coaching pathway(s) in my neck of the woods. Honestly don’t know. And the memory fails and the urge to go digging for ancient manuscripts – well, maybe pics from Aberystwyth – is weakish, to be honest. Fifteen years or more, I would think, as a paid employee ‘in cricket’. Been bloody marvellous.

Think I’m hoping to slap down a few thoughts on what coaching has or might or can look like: feel free to engage in rapturous approval or shoot me down as just a junior coach.

Understand this sharing implies a certain level of arrogance, underpinned as it is with the idea that I’m somehow worth listening to, or *have ideas*. But know what? I think I probably do… and will counter and deflect that arrogance thang by saying that much of what I feel I know (and want to ‘pass on’) is notions, confidences, practice(s) built by watching better people, better coaches. I am clear that I have been working alongside (or assisting, or being assisted) by brilliant people.

So what do they do? They hold the attention of players. They sometimes demonstrate… and they do it well – impressively, even. (Yup; I know. We’ll come back to this). They both drive sessions along – planning and scheduling – and absolutely allow and respond for reading the room; feeling-out what’s appropriate, changing tack, given the energy or level of understanding of the players. They are wonderfully disparate characters – of course they are! – some bit schoolmasterly, some almost tough and it’s hard to reduce their multifarious, individual approaches to commonalities – to ‘good practice’. But we better try.

Coaching is a fabulously rich job, whether paid or volunteer. (Done masses of both). I know coaches who have presence, or who can genuinely capture or even inspire by something more than their capacity to communicate. They go right past direct or directed meanings. They have an aura and the players buy in: they want to follow, never mind process learning. These kinds of coaches aren’t necessarily the best but the power of their personalities can be compelling and rich and often engaging in a deep, natural and human kindofaway. (Apols if that lumps all kinds of contentious categories into a dodgy and abstracted bundle but I’m hoping you know what I mean?) They tend to be ‘colourful’ and ‘individual’ and ‘responsive’ because they are all of those things: they are perceptive, sensitive, original people who happen to have skills in sport. And communication. And diplomacy. And performance – of both, or multiple types.

For the coaching to really work, players have to listen and they have to get better, yes? (Or no? There’s a thesis and an argument that outputs aren’t at all the essential work or the essence of coaching but plainly pathways are inevitably judged at least in part on where the players finish up). As always, things depend. What age-group are we talking? What standard? I am happy to report that I have done most of my work at the entry level to this marvellous meat-market – under 10s and 11s, typically. I try like hell to improve players but more than anything I think, I am trying to make these wee earthlings fall in love with a game: a game that they might well play into their 60s. But back to measurements.

Coaches with ‘something about them’ may be in a better position to galvanise players than quieter, more cerebral types. (But not necessarily). The Aura Guys (and Gals – or however they identify!) may have a kind of Route A towards happy, entertained learners – learners who *do* fall in love with the game (or the sessions)… and maybe they come to idolise the coach – something we have to be pretty careful about.

Aura Guys (& gals, etc) may be susceptible to ego, to showboating, to laziness, perhaps, around necessary disciplines in the game and in their own preparation. They may be so interested in playing to their gallery that they forget to coach. Having said that, my experience is that *mostly*, what I’m going to call humour (in sessions, in matches) can be key. Humour meaning temperature; meaning flavour; meaning wit. Positive, rich, confident and often downright enjoyable team humour can start with a coach who brings upful energy as much as (s)he brings knowledge.

But what about the majority of us, who ‘lack’ charisma? Well our sessions need to be compelling in a different way. It is necessary that they are. The capture must come from out of the black and white stuff: good thinking; good planning; challenges that work on the skills in a way that feels productive and supportive. It’s absolutely possible to host brilliant sessions without being an extrovert… but my experience suggests that (maaaybee with young players in particular?) it’s a tough gig without bringing high energy activity. (So get players racing, or buzzing, or giggling as they fly into or through the drills). Enjoyment is such a big part of achievement – is so closely related to it so often.

‘Low-key’ coaching makes sense in a zillion ways – not least because it fits with the whole player-centred cowabunga – of which we all solidly approve. This should not be about the ego of the host, but the needs and capacities of the recipients. However, the vibe, the energy needs to be bright, and somehow liberating.

Somewhere at the start of this thing we mentioned demonstrations. I have mixed feelings about coaches doing demo’s, having experienced the pluses and minuses. Plainly – and we might say historically – this can feed straight into the idea of a coach being some experienced and therefore entitled demagogue. Probably driving performatively, in the vee, with head remarkably and mesmerically still. This can of course be anachronistic cobblers, much more about the needs of middle-aged blokes than the needs of players… and I have no issue with anybody calling it out as such. But it can also be instructive, if handled well. For one thing, some players *really are* visual learners. So even if Middle-aged Geezer Posing with Bat is overly full of himself, it may be that the movements may be registering in a way that supports development.

A contemporary view of this could be that like issuing penalties for dropped catches/bad listening/repeat ‘failures’ it shouldn’t be happening, because there are better options available – like offering guiding principles, not absolutes or methods. In situations like this – i.e where demonstrations might once have been Option A – I often tell players that coaching has changed on this, and that maybe they should try to find a way towards the particular objective. A way that might work repeatedly, consistently. And offer shapes or advisories or further questions if we aren’t getting to where we want to be – or towards where we want to be? I’m increasingly using words like awareness and even the phrase ‘trying to be conscious (of our movements’) as well repeating my fave mantra over many years, namely “how do we make this work?”

Coaching is about reading the room, being sensitive, encouraging, supporting. Having knowledge but being able to use that to offer good questions rather than lectures. Sure, be A Voice and maybe An Entertainer if that comes naturally to you. If it doesn’t you can still make it work. Think about it; be authentically you and allow (or make) the material of your sessions capture and engage your players.