Coach Matt Coppinger had a productive first year as HC of BUAFL's Greenwich Mariners

 In 2004 Matt decided to help new BCAFL outfit Greenwich Mariners as a defensive coach. The following year he took on the Head Coach role. This article talks about Matt's experience of becoming a Head Coach for the first time. The article was written shortly after his 1st year, since then Coach Coppinger has compiled a 15-9 record with the Mariners, making the playoffs in 2 out of his 3 years with the club.

Matt Coppinger has been involved in British American Football for the last 17 years.  He started out as a rookie linebacker for the Southend Sabres kitted youth team. That team, led by Jim Messenger, went on to win 2 consecutive BYAFA National Championships. In 1992 Matt went on to setup the University of Hertfordshire Hurricanes, winning the BCAFL Most Valuable Player in 1996. His first coaching job was the following year as a Linebacker coach at Hertfordshire, that team led by Head Coach Beau Riffenburgh went on to win the BCAFL College Bowl. The following year Matt was promoted to Defensive Co-ordinator and again the team went on to win the College Bowl defeating Loughborough 7-3 in a defensive battle. After a 3 year stint away from football Matt returned as a player for the London Olympians, winning 3 National Championships and as a defensive positional coach for Hertfordshire winning another College Bowl.

CHANGING THE CULTURE

In this article I'm going to share with you some of the things we've been doing at University of Greenwich for the last 6 months. I hope to give you an insight into how the team has changed over the last year, what we do, some of the problems we have had and how we have solved them. By no means do I think that what we do is the "right way"! Certainly we have so much more to do at Greenwich, and toward the end of this I hope we can explore those things. I have been fortunate to have been involved in a few championship winning teams as a player and a coach. But being a Head Coach was a completely new experience for me. The first thing I had to do was take a hard look at our team.

In the previous season (our first year in the league and my first year as a defensive coach at Greenwich), this was the honest appraisal of our team:

- We had very few experienced players
- no experienced coaches
- no playbook
- no mid week practice (no learning, no player development)
- no relationship with the University
- no coaching plan or organisation
- no scouting
- during the season we lost 3 coaches.
- practice attendance was awful.
- we didn't believe we could win.
- we ended up 3-5 with two wins against another new team APU and one against a rebuilding Leicester team.
- We lost 4 of our most experienced players.
- we also lost 4 or 5 good "rookies".

We were in pretty bad shape and I knew that we would have to fundamentally change many things within the programme. So, where do you start? The first thing I wanted to do was list everything I felt I was responsible for. These are the things I came up with:

1. Coach Recruitment
2. Practice organisation
3. Teaching Football - systems, fundamentals, coaching
4. Team Culture - Philosophy, Rules, Expectations
5. Coach Education
6. Player Development
7. Scouting and Game Preparation
8. Assisting the Committee
9. Safety
10. University relations
11. Make it Fun!

These are the things as Head Coaches we can "control". Some of the things that I didn't list here that I feel are the realm of the student committee include:

- Recruitment
- Finances
- League Administration
- Socials
- Club Administration
- Home / away game administration

Under assisting the committee I see this as making sure they have covered everything. I saw that it was necessary for me to get involved with Kit and equipment, practice facilities and some aspects of recruitment.

So with these things in mind I wanted to set an expectation of what I needed to achieve to be successful. To do this I thought about the teams I have been on that have been successful. What did they do? How were they organised? What was it that I liked as a player? As a coach what did I think worked? The things I listed that I thought would be critical to success are:

Overall - Change the culture to a professional, fun and safe sporting experience. Our focus must be to help the players achieve their potential.

1. Recruit at least 6 qualified and insured coaches.
2. Structured Practice Plan - for the season, and for each practice
3. Simple football systems and practice fundamentals - produce a playbook
4. Formally state team expectations, rules, procedures - everyone on the same page
5. Coach the coaches - establish how we coach, systems, procedures
6. Record player measurables, gym programme, introduce drills that are going to teach players good fundamentals.
7. Establish contact with other coaches and get accurate scouting information
8. First Aid procedures in place - qualified first aider.
9. Establish a plan for the year with the committee
10. Establish a dialogue with the University - get more money!
11. Maintain positive outlook and keep things fun

Personally, after looking at what I wanted to achieve I knew that I was going to need help to get it done. The successful teams I have been on have always managed to teach players the correct way to play their position. To do this you really do need positional coaches. Additionally, I needed to bring on board an offensive co-ordinator and someone I knew understood the direction I wanted to take things. I was very fortunate to get a very experienced and organised coach who had been involved with the Hertfordshire programme - Steve Dennis. I recruited coaches like crazy and ended up with 10! With some people in place I could start to divide up the work and get things done.

These are things I did for each of the objectives above.

- Advertised on forums, bafca, local senior teams, known contacts, former players.
- Explained expectations regarding conduct and commitment
- Top down - Offensive Co-ordinator first
- BCAFL veterans
- Recruited 10 coaches mix of backgrounds

Structured Practice Plan
- Put together a schedule for the entire year.
- Once the systems were decided, choose what we would teach and when
- Put together an installation plan
- Put together a session planning template
- Plan and document session plans for first 4 practices up front, then start planning sessions on a weekly basis.

Simple football systems and practice fundamentals - produce a playbook
- I didn't feel the specific systems that we run were critical to our success. As long as they were easy to teach and we could execute them.
- Chose the 44 Stack defense as it is a system I know.
- Offensive system should be balanced. Let the O Co decide.
- Ensure we taught fundamentals at every practice - slot for it.
- Ensure we taught special teams at every practice - slot for it.
- Produced a defensive, offensive and special teams playbook for each player.

Formally state team expectations, rules, procedures - everyone on the same page
- Player and Coaches Pack
- Packs included everything from the Schedule to training locations, team rules, gym programme, diet, treating injuries, practice lay out, drills, installation plan etc
- Explain the key rules to everyone

Coach the coaches - establish how we coach, systems, procedures
- Having one other coach or many other coaches, one thing remains, you have to communicate what you want done.
- Coaching pack details how our practices should run, systems etc
- asked coaches to produce drills from a drill template - this helps them work out the key points to the drill
- asked coaches to purchase a book for the area they were coaching - although I recommended Tom Bass's book Playing Football the NFL way
- Coaching the coaches days to discuss systems, procedures, techniques etc
- Ensure ALL coaches have something to do on game day

Record player measurables, gym programme, introduce drills that are going to teach players good fundamentals.
- Ensured that each coach was armed with a set of drills that taught the main skills for their position.
- Recorded basic measurables, helps players compete against each other.
- Recorded player attendence at every session
- Got a sponsorship deal to give players free gym membership.

Establish contact with other coaches and get accurate scouting information
- Contacted various coaches to agree to swap material.
- Videod certain games.
- Set up a common scout report form - not everyone has video to swap.
- Show players scout videos - talk through key points, classroom based with projector

First Aid procedures in place - qualified first aider.
- Wrote down emergency procedures for training and games.
- 1 coach qualified as a first aider
- Purchased my own first aid kit

Establish a plan for the year with the committee
- Sat down with committee to draw up a plan to ensure everything was organised.
- Covered most aspects I was concerned with - kit, facilities, recruitment.
- Set expectations as to what my role is.
- Keep an update on what the committee is achieving.

Establish a dialogue with the University - get more money!
- Terrible relationship with University.
- Sat down and explained our approach, documentation, ethics, plans and goals etc.
- We received more money for kit, practice, travel and more.

Maintain positive outlook and keep things fun
- Coaches often set the tempo and outlook of the players.
- Lots of smiling!
- Form a rapport and get to know the players
- Lots of positive feedback
- Things don't always go our way.
- Don't let other things get in the way of practice.
- Whether 40 players turn up or 4 we can always achieve something.

RESULTS

After doing all these things what results did we see?

- We feel all of our players have developed from last year.
- More importantly we feel that our rookies have developed much faster and many are competing for or hold starting spots.
- We believe we can win, players have faith in what we are doing. 6-2 record in our 2nd year making the playoffs
- Players are seeing results of the coaching
- Practice attendance has improved since the start of the year.
- More players are working out and lifting weights.
- Turned around from 3-5 to 6-2 and a playoff spot
- The university has given us more money and copied our approach for other teams.

PROBLEMS

It hasn't always been easy and we have had problems.  Changing the culture takes time, it has taken us 8 weeks before players (and sometimes coaches) have begun to see the results of our hardwork. We had major issues with our mid week practice facility. To deal with this we have tried to make classroom sessions more video, more hands-on walkthroughs. Recruitment has been poor - probably the only thing the committee had failed to do well. Player attendance was terrible at the start of the year and in some cases we had more coaches than players! Poor attendance and lack of kit meant we had to juggle some of our sessions. However, with coaches there, we can quickly decide how to breakdown the group we have and what we can teach them. We can always teach fundamentals. Our attendance has massively improved with an average attendance of 38 players per session. We lost our home ground 4 weeks before our first game. We saw this as an opportunity and through our local BAFL team, managed to get Crystal Palace Stadium. This has helped promote the feeling of professionalism by giving our players a decent venue to play in.

FUTURE

Our ideas for the future are:

- Continue to change the culture.
- Push coaches to develop knowledge, drills, approach.
- Push players to develop technically, physically and from a team work standpoint.
- Incorporate more video and self analysis, open up video content to players.
- Video training sessions.
- Push the university for more funding!
- Now that we have established a way of doing things we can put more focus on things such as recruitment.
- Update and improve our procedures, documentation etc.
- Improve our practice structure, try to be more efficient and flexible.
- Give players access to more information regarding how to play their position.
- Work on team discipline!

CONCLUSIONS

From my first year as a Head Coach at the Mariners I had a massive learning experience. Being a head coach is so much more than the X's and O's. As you can see from this article, the systems employed were really a minor consideration in the big picture. Being a head coach in my opinion is really about taking responsibility for the entire programme, from relationships with the university and other coaches to managing player development and planning practice sessions - let alone actual coaching! Its a huge role that requires a significant amount of time, patience and hard work. Without the help of the coaches around me we would never have been able to achieve the things we did over the year. Saying this, our work is not done and we have to strive to continue our commitment to these goals , continue the development and work on the things we are bad at. Greenwich has its own challenges and unique situations and of course not all of these are relevant to your programmes. However, I hope my experience can help teams think about their approach and our younger coaches on becoming a head coach.