The Oceania Football Confederation hosted an internal four-day workshop between March 24-29 at Mount Smart Stadium in Auckland, to review the Football Division’s activities and plan for 2021.
OFC General Secretary Franck Castillo and Chief of the Football Division Patrick Jacquemet provided organisational updates, while twelve staff members from various departments delivered presentations and offshore consultants interacted through Zoom.
FIFA’s Technical Consultant for Oceania and former Football Ferns coach Tony Readings was also a guest speaker.
On Wednesday, OFC Head of Football Development Paul Toohey presented department overviews for player development, goalkeeping, women’s football, futsal and beach soccer.
In the afternoon, OFC Head of Education and High Performance Owain Prosser focussed on medical and the new e-learning platform alongside its development manager Sean Douglas.
Toohey said the event was a great chance for the division to re-align with their strategic goals in the absence of OFC competitions due to COVID-19 restrictions.
“It was the first time we had come together since our team has more than doubled in size,” he said.
“One of the real benefits is that we now have a broader understanding of each other for when we approach our local Member Associations.”
Prosser echoed those thoughts and said collaboration was a strength of OFC’s Football Division.
“Being able to work efficiently as a team enables us to better support the Member Associations and have a positive impact on football in the region,” Prosser said.
“We were also keen to get feedback on the e-learning platform to help us ensure the needs of our learners are met when it is launched later this year.”
OFC Head of Refereeing Kevin Stoltenkamp presented on Thursday and said their focus had been on developing referee standards in local tournaments.
“We’re providing support for our referees by tracking their progress and giving them our resources to improve,” he said.
“The workshop was important for us to understand how we all play a part because all we want is to be confident in our work.”
Team building activities took place on Friday and the workshop was due to conclude on Monday 29.
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