I asked Brad Porter, director of the Skill Aquisition phase at CCSC, some important questions about the program and how we as a college see the program benefitting our students.
1. What kind of research has gone into the design of the SA program?
The Skill Acquisition program uses the guiding principles from FFA’s National Curriculum with some tweaks and adjustments to fit our context, which is unique when compared to other community and elite football environments. We are constantly looking for ways to improve the program to best suit the needs of our learners. It’s about continual, gradual improvement.
2. How does the program prepare players in regards to them entering the Game Training phase?
Hopefully, by the time kids reach high college and the Game Training program, they have established a real passion for the game and have spent enough time sampling other sports to build a foundation of movement that allows a level of resilience to handle the higher football specific training loads. From a football perspective, the players will have developed a sound ability to solve football problems in the context of the 9v9 game and what that looks like for each child will be different and dependent on their development trajectory.
3. What characteristics are you looking for in footballers within the SA program?
From a football skill perspective? None. We know development is a non-linear process and that current performance is an extremely poor indicator of future performance so looking for football characteristics in players in this age bracket would be foolish and akin to trying to predict next week’s lotto numbers. We are simply looking for kids who are intrinsically motivated and are developing a passion for the game. These two elements are essential for any future success. The program that produces the best 12 year olds is a very different program to the one that produces the best 18 year olds. We are in the long game.
4. How can we measure the development of footballers throughout the duration of the program?
This links in with the above question. Measurement of a non-linear process such as player development can be dangerous. You can expect to see periods of rapid improvement, periods of stagnation and at times, even decline in a player’s development (for example during a growth spurt). Having said that, it is still important to be able to quantify that we are heading in the right direction over the long term. So the key with measurement is that we are looking for longer term trends (to ride out periods of stagnation and decline) rather than shorter term.
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