The National Development Themes underpin coaching through the Player Pathway.
Within our practice design we should ensure that we proactively incorporate the National Development themes and that every practice contains elements of attacking play, defending play and transition. It is then up to us as coaches to focus on the key messages from that practice whilst ensuring that we do not overlook the other important aspects.
We in Suffolk need to take these guidelines for outfield players and apply them to keepers. At present performance centre does not have the time to develop the technical skills of a keeper, just their game decision making. So, it is up to Development Centres and Academy Centres to provide this technique training. Suffolk have over the last few seasons done a tremendous amount of work to improve keeper skills and this needs to continue.