Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) Technical Director, Jim Selby, has successfully completed the FIFA Member Association’s Senior Football Coaching course accreditation, in conjunction with OFC.
Last week’s course was the second and last phase for the programme in the Cook Islands first delivered before a two months recess. Selby had only words of praise for the participants.
“At the beginning they knew it would be over an extended period of time. They had to attend the first part, return to work, and then come back for the second part. Sometimes it is outside their comfort zones and it is not easy. They have been a committed team, outstanding really.”
The coaching clinic falls in FIFA and OFC’s strategic planning of coaching programmes in the Pacific Islands.
The four-day course covered a series of topics with the aim being that coaches are now ready to organise and coach a group of players on a specific training skillsets.
Selby parted diverse and intense skills to participants in the lecture room and in the football fields on various topics, including: tactical training systems and styles of play, match analysis, principles of fitness training, goalkeeper training, attacking and defensive play, and game awareness in functional and phase practices to name a few.
“The coaching course had been an intensive one and the participants were committed. It hasn’t been easy to give up their time to attend. They have all done a fantastic job and are all looking forward to developing football in the Cook Islands,” Selby said.
In the last two years FIFA had conducted ‘Training of Trainers’ programmes that gave Cook Islands participants the qualification to deliver OFC courses such as fun football, kids, and junior and youth football courses.
Percentage wise, the course had 10 percent women participation. Selby said that this disparity is a common trend in Pacific Island countries.
“Quite often in the Pacific girls don’t play sport from an early age, they take it up in their teens, while European girls start with the sport very young.”
Selby is adamant that the Just Play football programme, which he designed, contains the best strategy aimed at bringing more female players into the game.
Courtesy of CIFA Media.