For various sporting institutions around the country, part of what makes them so prestigious is their recruitment & coaching quality and it’s sporting development within the institution.
Amongst the top institutions, sits Leeds Beckett University who are known for its talent development when it comes to coaching and athletes reaching the professional level, with the quality rarely dropping year upon year.
However, both the football and futsal club have experienced their fair share of challenges this year which stems from a lack of options to take the role of head coach for these teams.
Current football and futsal programme coordinator Cameron Noyes has the responsibility of overseeing the football club and futsal club whilst dealing with the recruitment process of both clubs.
Having a clear plan of how coaches are chosen and the programmes available only make it so that these teams are assisted in the best way possible, and this is something that Cameron mentions.
“The recruitment of coaches is something that’s done centrally with the Athletic union, so we look to get the best coaches in place for our student clubs. They’ll be there the most qualified, the most experienced coaches where possible.
“Alongside that, we have our leadership Academy, which is kind of an internal programme that we’ve got to develop our own student coaches and they’re the students that might come from the School of Sport and are interested within that sport and so we look to provide them with the right level of resource to be able to develop that.
“The FA & England Football is playing catchup”
Beckett has seen a lot of success when it comes to their football club, reaching finals and also winning titles over the past seasons proving it’s programme to be effective.
Unfortunately for the women’s first team, this season has proven to be a challenge as they have only one win and lost six, on top of losing their manager midway through the season.
Whilst things are going much better for the Futsal club who are second in the league, they also find themselves in search of a coach replacement which may not happen any time soon, given the difficulties around the FA and it’s courses.
“The national landscape of coaching at this moment in time where the FA and England football specifically are playing kind of catch up on the back of COVID with the courses and if you try to have a look to book onto an England FA course, the majority of them are fully booked and then now only taking applicants for July 2024.” Added Noyes.
The futsal first team who won their first three games and drew one in the early stages of the season we’re already showcasing a massive improvement on the court, compared to last season where every game ended in defeat.
And now with the sudden departure of the coach, perhaps the team is falling to the old ways again which is something that second-team player James Kenyon highlights.
“The coach we had was a good figurehead, training sessions were well structured, good drills and we were seeing results and improvements for the first team and second team. So last season we played Man Met and Edge Hill Universities, won one, lost one and we lost very badly to Man Met, however this year we pulled them to a much closer game losing 7-5 and one of the goals we conceded was because of fouls.
“So that just shows the impact of a good coach and him being on the sidelines, telling us what to do, and giving us tips, however since he’s left the results haven’t been so good and training’s dropped slightly.
James has been part of the team for two seasons now and he like various other players knew nothing about the sport prior to joining, so he understands the significance of having a coach in the team to support it’s players and keep the team well structured.
“Having a coach is very important because there’s not too many futsal coaches about and most of us in the team came to futsal through playing 5-aside, and playing football, having never played futsal before, so to have someone that knows what they’re talking about, knows all the drills, the tactics, to be able to just tell you them and implement them in training and then into games is massive.
“And now, the training is a bit unstructured, people are turning up late, so we’ve had to introduce fine systems to try and get that organization and figurehead back when there’s only player coaches sorting it all out. He explained.
A new experience
Last year in particular, ended in success for the men’s football club with the first, second and fourth teams all winning the league, so expectations will be high to achieve the same this year.
Now in charge of the fourth team and is 20-year-old Tom Howard who was given the role earlier this year and is very much a product of the university in the grand scheme of things.
Tom who studies Sports Coaching, was initially part of the futsal team last year which played a part in him getting the role of head coach, demonstrating the different paths that can be taken through the different programmes and sports accessible at Beckett.
“So I’ve coached for about four years starting at 16, and I’ve done stuff at like a private academy, I’ve done stuff at like soccer schools and last year I actually played futsal for the university.
“And the reason why I played futsal was because I had parents asking me to coach the futsal team and I didn’t know anything about it so I decided to play it to get a bit of understanding and it’s such a different kind of dimension to the kind of football that everyone is used to and there’s so many points I took from it, and there I met Chris Smith who was head of football operations at that time at Leeds Beckett.
“He then decided to kind of put me forward for this role of coach which was successful. He unfortunately left in the summer but thanks to him I’m still here doing this. Tom added.
Beckett’s fourth team have had a decent start to the season, with two wins, one loss and one draw but more importantly, the players seem to be satisfied with his current work and attention to detail as highlighted by full-back Joel Barker.
“Tom’s been doing really well to be fair, obviously he usually coaches younger ages, first job with an open age/older environment, but goes into a lot of detail with things.
All the finer details are floored out in training to make sure that in a match any mistakes don’t happen or if they do happen, they’re corrected quickly. We’ve had a couple of classroom sessions looking at past games and stuff to go into future games and yeah just goes into all the little details that other people don’t go into.” Said Barker.
‘It’s not uncommon to be replacing coaches’
It’s clear to see that clubs with a set plan and idea under the guidance of a coach can reach further heights than others and are more likely to continue that success due to their stability.
But for the clubs in search of an appointment replacement, it’s also vital that the chosen candidate aligns with the requirements set by the University and doesn’t hastily appoint the wrong individual.
Noyes also spoke about the University dynamics where it’s not uncommon to be recruiting or replacing coaches often and their effort to support those committees in need: “And that the very nature university sport, it’s not uncommon to be recruiting coaches on it on a yearly basis.
It’s not uncommon to be replacing coaches as well, and when you’re working with different cohorts and you’re working along the university cycle where you only actually have students for sometimes one year, sometimes three years, it’s also vitally important that the coaches you’re putting in place kind of aligned to that and we’re not committing beyond usually one year.
“And so that might be through supporting the student committees with creating a leadership group to help with leading their sessions, relying on the expertise of the full-time members of staff.”
