15 Nov 2011
15 November – Sports industry experts offered an insightful look into how to develop the young talent into competitive professionals at a seminar titled ‘From Raw Talent to Football Teams’ as part of the Aspire4sports, sports congress and conference at the Aspire Auditorium today.
The first speaker was Corné Groenendijk, head of the Youth Ajax football club in Cape Town, South Africa who shared his experiences as a coaching professional for over 20 years with the large audience that turned up for the session.
“The foremost factor of success that I would look for is history. If football is your number one sport, if you have the resolve, if you have players, history does something for you,” said Dutchman Groenendijk as he compared his experience of the industry with South Africa and The Netherlands.
“The next important factor is vision. You should know the game and know what you are looking for. Also important is how the leagues are set up within a country…. Restructure the leagues as much as you can, until players can reach their potential,” noted Groenendijk.
According to him, other important aspects of success are facilities, the quality of coaching and developmental programmes in place for the players.
“Don’t let your players swim without water. Play them against the best to know their potential,” he said.
Next speaker on the panel was Gerard Neesham, CEO of the Clontar Foundation, Australia who shared his journey as a teacher who later transforms the lives of aboriginal children through sports.
““I had the idea that if I had a football academy maybe, maybe they (aboriginal kids) will come. Initially only 25 students came out on the field,” recalled Neesham who’s academy now encompass the entire Australian territory with 3,000 students.
“Generally, the schools only had a retention rate of 15 weeks (in the context of aboriginal students). You couldn’t teach. You had no outcome. But with our experiment, we got 38 weeks out of our students.”
“I drove my two boys to school for 14 years and not once they talked about mathematics. They only talked about who they will be playing. The only thing that attracted them to school was football,” he said.
According to Neesham, a country like Qatar can have the best facilities but what is important is to have a large base of young people wanting to aspire.
“Unless you have a large base at the pyramid, you will have nothing on the top.”
Also speaking at the panel discussion was Dr Amanda Johnson, head of Physiology at Aspire Health Centre, who explained the importance of screening each individual according to his/her capacity and not the chronological age.
“A child is not a little adult. It’s important that we don’t put adult training sessions for these children. We have to adapt them to their age. The young skeleton is very different from the adult skeleton. We have to make sure that training is relative to the age they are in,” said Dr Johnson as she pointed out that during specific periods of growth, the skeleton is more prone to injuries.
According to her, chronological age is a poor indicator on which to base athletic development for athletes between the age of 10 and 16.
“At Aspire, we screen the skeleton… and it will tell us how far on the development track these boys have got to,” she said.
The last of the panellists, Neil Graig, director of Sport Performance at Melbourne Football Club, then gave an overview of how MCC tracks the performances of an athlete from being a novice to the expert performer.
He touched upon the constraints of bringing talent into the club, how to recruit based on technique and skill level, what sort of training and playing environment is conducive, the teaching and education model, and player education.
Following their presentations, Dr Dennis Hatcher - director of Sports Science at Aspire Academy, then brought all the speakers onto the stage to engage in a lively panel discussion, which he moderated.