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During the week, the Central Coast Mariners signed a landmark agreement with their association. The Mariners will take over the training for the association rep sides, both boys and girls, from under-11 to under-18.
Why is this agreement so important for football in Australia?
SBS has long argued that in Australia there is no structural pathway from a local park side to the A-League. Countless articles over the years have come from not only SBS but other football writers on the urgent need for top quality coaching of our juniors.
The agreement will ensure that from October 1 this year, CCF’s representative youth league programs will be integrated into and form a key component of the Mariners’ ambitious academy initiatives, meaning the association rep players will know they have the best junior coaching in Australia.
To ensure top quality in the coaching, the Mariners are looking to appoint coaches of the highest order to undertake this training and technical program development. Here is link for the coaching positions now going at the Mariners. It’s worth reading if only to see how serious the club takes these coaching positions.
The key to football connecting to the broader football family is through the associations and their park teams. There can be no doubt about this.
How to connect is difficult. However, by taking over the training of rep teams, developing individual player programs and providing coaching excellence, it will do two very important things for football:
• Improve the technical skills of players.
• Help stop the drift of players to other codes because of crap coaching and club politics.
These two steps will have everyday folk understanding there is a place for their children in football and there is a path to the A-League. This ensures every park team president and their committees support their local A-League club or club they have been assigned too.
I hope this is the start of other clubs doing similar things as this is without doubt an Australian first – even in the old NSL days, the NSL clubs only poached association players, but they never trained them.
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