Whose Game Is It Anyway by Stanley Lover

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Whose Game Is It Anyway? by Stanley Lover

Trials and tribulations of a novice coach

I hate coaches - well, not coaches as such but coaching - or, more accurately, some forms of coaching. The kind that is long on theory and short on fun; where players are just numbers, shuffled into straight jacket roles, stifling free expression of skills.

It all started at my first match for Blackheath and Kidbrooke Church of England Primary School. Apart from playground scrimmages with an old tennis ball, we learned the game in house matches, wearing red, green, blue or yellow hoops. We played on the adjacent practice field of the world famous Blackheath Rugby Club. Friday afternoon was our football period, eagerly awaited from every Monday morning. When bad weather put paid to chasing a ball we were crammed into a darkened classroom for a geography lesson illustrated with black and white slides, often about children in African villages. The reason for these lessons was not the best motivation to absorb knowledge so geography became one of our least favourite subjects.

Ten years old, small for my age but quick as a whippet and showing promise, I ran home to announce the big news - my name was on the team sheet at centre-forward for the next Saturday's big match against local rivals Fossdene Road Secondary School. The local press said our schools were at loggerheads. I didn't know what that meant but it didn't sound very nice.

I was doubly proud when elder brother Bert promised to be there with a team-mate Jim Funnel, the goalkeeper of Hampton Court Rovers, a Sunday morning side based in The Rampant Bull pub in Plumstead. They took me to away games in the back of a lorry with the lads singing bawdy songs whose words I can easily recall, although not without a blush.

Stanley Lover - Blackheath and Kidbrooke Church of England Primary School.

The match was on Pitch 35 exposed to a chill wind in the centre of Blackheath Common. Bert and Jim, sporting scarves in our colours, fussed around me and started the school song "Play up Kidbrooke, let's have another one". I felt embarrassed.

Five minutes after the start I heard Bert's voice booming, "Stan, move over more to the right!" Distracted, I took my eye off the ball and felt it
thumping into my ear. I moved to the right but it made no difference - the ball was miles away now.

A little later I intended to kick for goal but heard a loud cry, "Hold it, Stan!" I obeyed and hesitated. "Now, pass it left!" I passed the ball left but it trickled to their centre-half. He gathered the ball and started to run past me.

"Take him out!" screamed Bert and Jim. How was I supposed to do that? Push him, kick him, grab him? Not being versed in these foul deeds I made a clumsy lunge, knocking him off the ball and hurting my ankle as we fell. I'd committed my first intentional foul and felt ashamed.

The referee, one of their teachers, blew his whistle shrill and long. He thundered towards me with a ferocious scowl, big black walrus moustache twitching. I was in big trouble. Towering above me as I nursed my leg he growled, "Any more of that my lad and you're off!"

If that had happened I would have disgraced the school and probably never again played in the coveted black and red vertical striped jersey. I struggled to my feet and hobbled bravely back into the game. The pain got worse; I could hardly drag one foot in front of the other. Then I heard Bert shouting, "Get back, you're offside!"

A whole series of instructions sailed across the pitch. I was getting fed up with this. Did they want me to play like a robot, reacting like a puppet on a string? Whose game was it anyway, theirs or mine? Didn't they know that coaching during a match was not allowed? Well, I didn't either - it would be another fifty seven years before soccer rules permitted coaching in play - but they should have known.

There was no fun in trying to play somebody else's game. I sulked and made little effort to show my talents for the rest of the match. We lost 1-0.

Bert and Jim thought I had played well but could do better. Still sullen I said I would have been better without the instructions from the touchline. Bert said they were coaching me. Well, I thought, if that's coaching I'd prefer to be allowed to play my own game.

As I progressed as a player in the war years, from schools football through to semi-professional level, there were no official coaching schemes in operation. Even at a top pro club Charlton Athletic, where I played as a junior, coaching was very rudimentary by comparison with current sophistication.

Twenty years after my first taste of "coaching" from brother Bert I became a coach! Not by choice but at the request of a new mistress at my son's primary school, Christ Church.

Miss Pendwick, a sports enthusiastic, had replaced one of the three ageing lady teachers and had learned that I was a referee. She wanted to start a football team to play in the local league - would I coach the boys?

I agreed and started to learn about coaching from two of the very few books available SKILFUL SOCCER FOR YOUNG PLAYERS by Walter Winterbottom, and CONSTRUCTIVE FOOTBALL by Howard Fabian and Tom Whittaker (Arsenal's Manager).

From these a carefully planned first session of ninety minutes was charted, starting with an introduction to the game and then, after a warming up period, on to practice the basic skills of control, passing, shooting, heading, etc. A final twenty minutes kick-about would be for fun.

That was the theory.

My students were fifteen excited boys aged between six and eleven. Most had never played or even seen a real game of football. When I arrived at our training ground, a patch of bare earth behind the school, they were everywhere, shouting, screaming, chasing around, climbing trees, wrestling and rolling in puddles of mud. With parents and teachers conspicuous by their absence I lost five valuable minutes rounding up the little monsters and sat them at my feet.

Not one had thought of putting on their (mostly brand new) soccer gear to be ready for the lesson - another ten minutes lost sorting out shirts, shorts and stockings. Boots had to be laced and tied.

All ready? Not quite. Six years old Ronnie Blackett's shorts were too big and fell to his ankles. A spare lace solved that problem. And, "What's this, Billy Thorpe?" His legs looked strange. The laces were tied from foot to knee criss-crossed, Roman legionnaire fashion. And young Colin Cook, a grandson of an Admiral of Her Majesty's Royal Navy, limped around painfully with feet splayed out like Charlie Chaplin's tottering tramp.

"Perhaps your boots are too small" I suggested, "Let me check." It did not need a Sherlock Holmes to find the cause - Colin had his right boot on his left foot and the left on the right! This revelation changed his worried frown into an angelic smile of relief and the rest of the group fell about with giggles and laughter. More of my rapidly dwindling time disappeared while getting this item sorted out.

The carefully planned session was in ruins. However, the boys had great fun and were eager to do it again. I told them our first match was only three weeks away and that we needed more serious training to make a good show for Christ Church.

Limited to a squad of fifteen made team selection simple - size and weight taking priority, with four subs on an imaginary bench. Moving from our tiny kick-about unmarked training area up to a real pitch was an eye-opener for the boys - so much space and enormous goals - even on a small size field intended for youth play.

Our league debut, against a Woolwich primary school, was a shock for our youngsters. Facing bigger and stronger opponents, already experienced in team play, they had no chance to put into effect the 4-4-2 strategy of their coach. They applied their own simple formula - kick-and-rush. Wherever the ball went so followed the ten outfield players, like a swarm of bees trails its queen.

Goal-kicks, of which we had many, were a problem; none of our lads could kick the ball out of the penalty area. The referee, one of their parents, had to forget this rule to keep the game moving. We were slaughtered 0-19.

The second and third matches went much the same way, 0-15 and 0-11, but we were getting better! Straight talking, about disciplined defence and support for our attack, must have been heard because, in our fourth match Colin Cook, comfortable now with his boots on the correct feet, scored! Result 1-4.

Colin scored again in the fifth game to put us in front but we were robbed because their equalizer was clearly off-side to anyone other than their referee. But, we finally showed our class with a glorious victory 1-0 in the sixth match; Colin doing it for us again.

Now that the team was not an embarrassment to the school we attracted supporters - a few noisy parents, chanting girls and Miss Pendwick. We were
on our way to the top! In fact we finished third, a feat recorded generously in the local media. Colin Cook, our top marksman, learned quickly and confirmed his talents in an England Youth XI after he moved to a naval college to follow family tradition.

That first year in coaching was instructive and rewarding. Remembering how I did not enjoy my first school match, because I was expected to play like a robot, I tried to encourage the boys to develop basic skills and apply them in a disciplined team without losing the fun element. During play I kept quiet, leaving it to them to do their best. At half-time I'd suggest one or two simple solutions to problems they had met, adding a few words of encouragement to keep up morale. It seemed to work.

I realized that the value of advice from brother Bert and Jim was well intentioned but I had not been prepared for it; the coaching should have been done before the match. That's easy to say in hindsight but my initiation into coaching taught the value of preparation, improvisation, player management, team play, and - top priority - that the coach has a duty to keep alive the fun element of the game. It is, after all, a game intended for the enjoyment of the players.

Coaches, referees, administrators, fans, et al, are but the supporting cast for the principal actors in the most popular sporting activity on Planet Earth.

© Stanley Lover 2005

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e-mail: stanley.lover@free.fr