Unlike my son however who seems to have developed an early penchant for vulgar language

Anyway as we pulled in to the drive way of Ms Rachel’s dance school to re-register for a second year, Emily informed us that she didn’t want to do ballet this year and would rather do hockey. Delighted by this news we did a U-turn quicker than a tory MP and exited the car park with glee.

Hadn’t thought this one out though had I? And two weeks later I drove Emily in to Armagh, only a false moustache short of full on disguise, hoping to get her registered before I was noticed and inevitably guilted in to coaching. I failed and with less glee accepted the role of Under 10s coach at Armagh Hockey Club. Saturday mornings this year would not be spent with a nice Americano and the Mushroom and spinach breakfast at the Yellow door. Instead I would be stood on top of a fucking mountain getting pissed on each week.

However if I am going to do something I am going to do it properly. So I turned up nice and early for a 0930 start in week 1 determined that i would give these kids my best………and 6 kids showed up. I had been told to plan for 20 but no worries I got going. There were 20 of them there by 0945 however. This did not amuse me. It was time to take a leaf out of Ms Rachel’s book. You see Ms Rachel’s dance class started at 1000, and if you arrived at 1001 you were locked out. Anybody who knows me will know that i loved this rule!

So I called a meeting of the parents. “Training” they were told “would commence at 0930. We have limited time with them so if they were late then they would go to the U9 group. This is a hockey club not a babysitting service”

There is so much wrong with that I am embarrassed to type it.

One parent told me that she had three kids. Two boys who played rugby and her daughter who was in my hockey group. Both sessions started at 1000, how was she meant to have both there on time?

My answer indicated that this was not my problem. I will come back to this later.

I had deliberately stayed away from coaching Emily’s group. Firstly cos she is my daughter, and secondly cos they are 5 and I would kill somebody. However they train at the other end of the pitch and from time to time when my group were on a drinks break I would have a look to see how they were going.

Firstly they all seemed to be having fun (which in reality is all that matters). The people taking this group were amazing, perfectly suited to this age, patient and kind. However there were queues, and we know how coach educators feel about queues don’t we?

So one morning we jumped in the car to drive home. It’s about a ten minute drive to the pitch from our house and the the twenty minutes I get in the car, just me and her, are among my favourite minutes of the week.

“Was hockey fun today?” I asked

“Yeah, really fun!”

“You seemed to be queueing up a lot”

“Yeah the queues are my favourite part”

“You like the queues?!”

“Yeah I get to meet new people and make new friends”

She then asked me why I was laughing.

There i was observing her session looking for what I wanted to see. Never for a second had I considered what she wanted. It is a massive lesson. Paul Revington once told me that coaching was simply the creation on an environment. The best coaches knew what environment was required. His job as Irish men’s coach was to create a high performance environment. Yet that is not the job of the Armagh HC Under 6 coach is it? Nor the Under 10s coach either.

You simply cannot create an environment without understanding where the players want to be, and in order to do this you have to do that thing that we forget to do sometimes as coaches. You have to get to know them!

I had rocked up at Armagh full of myself. How lucky these kids were to have me. Sure just last week I had been coaching…….. Jesus what a twat I was.

We had an excellent coach education day in school recently (they are not all excellent!), when a guy from the English FA came over and presented on coach’s interactions with players. He recalled a great story about a player now playing in the World cup. This player was constantly late for training to the point that he was going to ask her to leave the club. Only when he sat down with her did he find out the pressure her family was under, the sacrifices she was making just to be there, even if she was there a few minutes late.

Who am I (or indeed Ms Rachel!) to tell a parent that their kid has to be there at 0930, when I have no idea what is going on at home? Who am I to say that this is not a baby sitting service, when you know what? That parent might need that hour and a half of down time just to stay sane? It was not their problem at all, it was mine and the club’s.

I had forgotten the golden rule of coaching. They are not my players/player’s parents, I am their coach. I work for them and it is therefore my job to provide what they need from me.

Now I do not want this mis-interpreted as “It is ok to have queues” or “it is ok to be late”.

There are plenty of other ways of providing social opportunities within a session if you feel that the players want them, and for timekeeping, well as long i know that an effort is being made then that’s all i can ask.

The under 10s only have a quarter of a pitch for the 20 players. Post “queueing lesson” I decided we would play small 7 a side (or smaller) games whilst the other group would undertake some social related activity (sometimes hockey related, sometimes not). A variety of things from choosing their hockey team made up of cartoon characters