As the number of football coaches across the country continues to rise at a rapid rate, attention is now turning to providing a high level of support and ongoing mentoring to each of these coaches.

At the heart of New Zealand Football’s key strategic aim of its elite teams winning on the world stage is the mantra of ‘better coaches make better players’ and this has led to impressive progress in the Coach Development realm in recent months.

While the impact of quality coaching on players is clear, what is less well understood is that the quality of coach development will in turn have a significant impact on the quality of that coaching. To this end, NZ Football is placing emphasis on its freshly-established Community Coach Developer Training programme.

As part of the programme, NZ Football is providing a three-day, non-residential course that takes place across each of the seven member federations. The most recent editions of this training – provided at no cost to the candidate or federation – have taken place at the Capital Football Federation headquarters in Petone and at the home of Cambridge FC, which is part of the WaiBOP Federation.

Through this training, federations are able to identify potential coach developers who can then deliver community courses from the NZF Coach Education Pathway to budding coaches throughout their region.

“We are excited to have another layer of the coach developer network now in action and are looking forward to seeing how this investment impacts on the experiences of the coach, as well as the experiences of the player,” NZ Football Coach Development Manager Steven Dillon says.

“The 27 new participants who attended these two events alone have now been put into a position where they can positively influence the community coaches in their local clubs. Each coach developer has illustrated a keen desire to pass on their knowledge and experience and, in turn, help to stretch and grow others through positive education experiences,” he adds.

“Based on the feedback from these courses to date, I am confident this will be one of the most significant initiatives that have been introduced through NZ Football Coach Development in recent years.”

The candidates on each course are selected through a robust application process and care is taken to ensure they are representative of the federation in which they reside. In addition to a number of federation-based staff, attendees so far have included ex-professional players, club directors of football, freelance coaches and teachers.

The role of the NZ Football and federation staff then becomes that of a ‘Trainer’ or ‘Mentor’ under the following hierarchy: Trainer > Coach Developer > Coach > Player. The intention is to encourage a locally-led approach to coach development, supplementing the work done at a national level with the advanced courses of the NZ Football Coach Development Pathway.

The content and delivery of the Community Coach Developer Training Programme have been heavily supported and influenced by Sport New Zealand and the Regional Sports Trusts, as well as the International Council for Coaching Excellence (ICCE) and NSSU Coach Developer Academy (NCDA).

“NZ Football wishes to extend our thanks to these organisations, whose coach developer concepts have been key to building on to areas we have been working on over the last one-to-two years,” Dillon says.

To learn more about these opportunities please visit www.nzfootball.co.nz/GET-INVOLVED/Coaches or email steven.dillon@nzfootball.co.nz