St Joseph’s School All-Weather Pitch Training With Woking FC Coaching Goes Live This Coming Saturday!
Sean Crooke, Club Development Officer
The Club is proud to announce the launch of two new collaborations commencing this Saturday 10th September 2016.
The first relates to the use of an all-weather pitch facility at St Joseph’s School, which will be available to all teams from U7-U11 this season on a three-four weekly basis.
The addition of the St Joseph’s AWP comes after a pilot exercise undertaken with the school earlier this year, which proved to be a resounding success amongst players, parents and coaches alike. “Adding all-weather training to the curriculum for our younger players is a key plank of our ‘2020 Club Development Strategy’ and will provide additional capacity for us as a Club, especially during wet winter periods”, comments Club Development Officer Sean Crooke. “It will also encourage our coaches to experiment with some new approaches to their training, such as close-control ball mastery skills”.
The St Joseph’s School All-Weather Pitch
Related to the AWP facility at St Joseph’s is the start of a new coaching collaboration with Woking FC. Sean Crooke commented: “The tie-up with Woking will involve two areas of delivery. Firstly, Woking coaches will run dedicated training sessions for our U6 players at Northmead Junior School this season”. “We started with a small group of players last Saturday and it was a huge success”. “However, we will also be working with Woking FC at the new St Joseph’s AWP facility, where they will help facilitate sessions for our U7s, U8s, U9s and U10s”.
“These sessions will rely heavily on the ‘coach-the-coach’ approach; the intention is not for Woking to take over the running of the sessions each time but to work with our own volunteer coaches to enhance their ability to get the best out of their players”. Sean went on to say that “If through this approach, we can drive up the quality of our coaching delivery by 10%, the players and the Club will get a fantastic return”.
WRFC Coach Steve Franklin Introduces the Players to Ryan Dent, Woking Academy Coach
Combining the two initiatives means that the Club’s U7-U11s will train at two different venues throughout the season, with a percentage of their St Joseph’s AWP sessions co-run with Woking FC.
A rota is available on the Club website to show who trains where, throughout the season. Managers are asked to access the document and ensure that all their parents and players know which venue and time to attend the sessions. Please click here to access the St Joseph’s/Woking FC rota.