Creggaun Lodge

The manager of Probably Not It and the 13 girls team discusses coaching, managing people, and running the club in Heathrow East. She shares her experience of setting up the girls' team, training once a week, and having matches once a fortnight. Her coaching philosophy includes ball mastery skills, fun games, and small-sided games to engage players of all levels. She emphasizes the importance of inclusiveness and adapting sessions for beginners. She reflects on her love for the sport, influences from managers like Arsene Wenger, and the challenges and rewards of managing the team. The club now has a balanced ratio of boys to girls across different age groups. Okay, so today we're in the heart of the Galway Grouchers game chatting with the manager of Probably Not It and the 13 girls team, a club that's been part of the local community since the early 1990s. Today we'll be talking about coaching, managing people and what it really looks like to run the UC in Heathrow East. So to start with your name and your role at Probably Not It. So my name is Anne-Marie Flanagan and I am the manager of the under 13 girls team at Probably Not It. So how long have you been involved with the club and with this under 13 girls group? I've been involved with the club for 10 years. Initially my role at the club was child welfare officer and I took that role upon myself even before my children were involved in the club. So I actually stepped down as child welfare officer this year because I'd been doing it for 10 years and it was time to pass on the baton to somebody else. But I became involved with the girls team when they were under 16. So my daughter was at that age and we decided that we'd start the team so that she'd be able to play soccer. As a result of that we kind of inherited lots of other age groups along the way. So we've been sort of doing that since about 6 years now, 6, 7 years. And what does a typical week look like now during the season for the football team? A typical week is we train once a week. We would like to train more, have two stops a week but we're just kind of governed by space at the moment. The club are trying to get an astro in place so that we can train because there is an astro facility that we can use but it's not really big enough now for the size of the club. So we train once a week and we generally have a match once a fortnight. And next we'll just sort of look into the background of your playing career and coaching career. So just to go back to the beginning, how was your first experience of football? So I was mad to play football as a child but because there was no girls teams I wasn't able to play. So basically we used to play at school in the schoolyard with the boys and girls. There was a team for the boys but there was no team for the girls so I couldn't play on a sort of amateur, in a proper club. But my brother was a very good footballer, he was a semi-professional footballer and we were basically on the sidelines all the time watching him. So we had a great love for the sport and also growing up in London I went to school, primary school opposite the Spurs ground so we used to go to most of the home matches. So the love for the sport came from that really at the beginning. When you were younger was there any coaches or managers that shaped you into how you think you are now? Well I suppose the early influence would have been again going back to Spurs and at the time the manager's name was Keith Birkinshaw. But looking at managerial skills that I'd say I suppose I could use then as an influence for what I'm doing now with the girls would be more sort of along the lines of the way the IAC team play. The IAC club in general in terms of their academy in that I actually don't believe that kids should be playing competitively until they've probably reached the ages of 14 or 15 but it is what it is and we have to go with it. Was there any moments when you felt coaching was for you rather than just playing when you were younger? Well I suppose I would say I was mad to play in a team but because there was no girls football that's one of the reasons why I was quite passionate about wanting to set up a team for my daughter's age group to give them the opportunities that I never had. Did any of those early experiences teach you about good coaching and bad coaching? I suppose looking at how the sport has progressed it was always very much long ball football but what we have done is kind of adopted a more kind of possession based football for the girls and they're kind of really getting into that now so I look at it more as sort of a long game in terms of how we're coaching them rather than a kind of a win at all costs basis. I know you mentioned about the RF model but was there any particular managers, amateurs when you were younger or even a professional level now or in previous years who started with you and tried to learn from? That is a very good question. I suppose in terms of a manager that I probably would admire even though it grieves me to say it as a first fan but I would say probably how the likes of Arsene Wenger came in and changed the whole kind of, he really was the crux of how the premiership changed in terms of when he joined Arsenal making sure that everyone's diet changed, their exercise regime, the way that they played the game so I suppose he would be quite influential. Next we'll talk a bit more about your first role with the Provo under 13 girls. So when you first came in as the manager what was the group sort of the numbers, the level of them, the confidence I suppose of the players when you first met them compared to now? So when we first set the team up there wasn't really many other girls teams, there was one I think that would have been maybe three or four years ahead so we set up the group for what would have been under sixes at the time and that was great, we had good numbers, we probably had about 10 to 15 girls in that age group and the word got about that there was kind of a new academy team starting but the problem we had was we had younger girls and older girls coming into the team so obviously we didn't want to turn any group away and there was no other person willing to take on these other age groups so we found ourselves with a cohort of age groups from spreading across sort of like a six year age group which was difficult because obviously they were different ages but they all kind of had the same skill set and that they were all just very new to the game and we were lucky in that we had at the time with us Gary Trainor who at the time was a goal ready United academy coach so he really did help us with kind of setting up the team and setting up the skills and really getting the girls going so it was a tough first year but then afterwards all the girls kind of went into their subsequent age groups and people took on the team and as a result we had kind of like probably about five different age groups spread across for the next season so it actually worked great for the club and in terms of the club now we're probably nearly there at a 50-50 ratio of boys to girls from the ages of about 6 up to 14. And then just what would you say are your main responsibilities as a manager of this team would be? I suppose just to keep the girls interested I think it's really important to have a female coach when you have a girls team because in my experience we just see that the girls would probably if they were unsure about a drill or they were unsure of something they would be more likely to come to me to ask me could I just explain it more than the other three coaches who are male coaches who are brilliant coaches and are brilliant with the girls but I just think it's really important to have that female there that the girls can have the confidence to talk to. And roughly how many hours a week would you say you put into the team between I suppose like planning for sessions and getting coached and the matches and sort of the admin as well as the managers? Yeah so people think like oh it's just like you know one hour training session, one hour kind of at the match but it's a lot more than that so there would be a good hour of prep beforehand and then there would be obviously then your kind of hour of training for coaching but then you've got at least a half an hour either side of that for set up, tidying away, making sure the kids get away on time and then there's the prep for the game so there's prepping your team, prepping your kit, prepping your position, who's going to be playing where, how many subs you're going to have, looking at how we might adjust, make switches because obviously we want to give all the kids game time so if we're starting our best 11 or if we're going to maybe put on a couple of weaker players and swap them so I'd say all in all you're looking at the bonus of about 5 hours a week easily and then if there was a second session which you might do on an ad hoc basis then you're adding in another couple of hours into that so you're looking at least 5 hours a week minimum. Good stuff, so next we'll talk a bit more about your coaching philosophy. At this age with now how do you balance teaching tactics while also keeping sessions fun and engaging with the players? So we always start the session with our warm ups will be like ball mastery skills, it's really, really important to keep that up, the girls have been doing that since the get go but I still think it's really important even if you're only spending 10 minutes at the beginning just to do your ball mastery skills because they don't realise it or they don't notice it but they really do use them skills when they're playing matches and I think that that is a really important part. We also do a couple of fun games, again it can only be 5, 10 minutes but just games that again they don't necessarily think that they're learning much skills through that but they really are, they're learning about team bonding, they're learning about communication with each other and then we always do small sided games, we'll do kind of like a big game at the end, set pieces, that kind of thing so the fun element and the inclusiveness of everyone even if they're not the strongest player is paramount to what we do. And how would you adapt these sessions now say for the beginner players rather than maybe the better players on the team? Yeah so we're lucky to have, there's 4 coaches all in all so if we do have any new starters which we did have at the start of this season we might bring the new starters aside with maybe some of the weaker players and just go through the basics with them. I always say to the parents of new starters that we give them a few months to get used to playing and get comfortable on the ball before we would put them into a competitive game because there's nothing worse than a child getting thrown into a competitive game and just getting lost in it and they might not ever come back again so I think it's really important to just spend a bit of extra time with those kids and helping them and you can really see, I can see the benefits now already in not throwing them into a competitive game but getting them playing games when we're training and yeah that definitely makes a difference for them. How important is it to have the players making decisions for themselves and being able to express themselves rather than being told like every single move on the pitch like you see now on the professional level with managers? Yeah I think that's really important and I think that we always, we have just one girl who we've made manager of the team rather than, sorry not manager, captain, rather than making a different captain each week because I think it's really important because she always gives the girls a good pep talk, we always tell the girls to communicate with each other throughout the game and I think for us as coaches it's really important, particularly when they're playing a match, not to be coaching on the sideline. If you're coaching on the sideline I think you've lost the run of yourself really because it's one thing kind of giving them a little bit of guidance but there's nothing worse than seeing a coach on the sideline during a game just shouting at the kids, giving instructions all the time and it can be really off-putting for them as well so I might write down certain things that I've observed during the game and this goes for a training game as well and then we'll kind of discuss it afterwards. I might stop the game during training and just say right what did we do wrong here and nine times out of ten they will always know what they've done wrong and that can be a good learning session but if we were doing a proper competitive game versus another task there wouldn't be any coaching on the sideline. At this stage now you're under 13 levels, what would your thoughts be on winning versus the development aspects of the game? I am not a winner or cost manager. I do believe that we should be teaching the girls how to play the game properly and if they lose we're very much a let's play out from the back style of coaching in a team and if the girls give away the ball because they've lost it playing out from the back then that's our fault as coaches not their fault as players so I'm not a winner or cost and I think that making sure that the kids are having fun, that they're playing games and that they're going out and they're doing their best. We always say at the end of the game there's winners and learners not winners and losers so what did we learn from the game that we lost as opposed to you didn't play well enough and how do we learn from that moving on to moving forward to our next game? Is there any moments now that stand out particularly where folks are on the development side rather than just the results and just winning has paid off for the team? Yeah I think that when we practice our set pieces and they work and they do work and they have worked for the girls I think that gives them a boost so I think that continuing to do what we do I'm kind of very much looking at it as being a long game and I don't think we're going to have any professional footballers coming out of our team but if those girls are still playing the game when they're 16, 17 even into their 20s then we've done our job of what we should be doing as coaches. Has there been any moments where you've had to remind yourself or parents about how it is a long term journey like you said say for example if you lost a game where you prioritised development and giving maybe the week or third minutes rather than keeping a full strength team out for the whole game? I have to say we're very fortunate with our team and with the parents. The parents were very supportive. We have been fortunate that we've never had a parent complain about the girls losing the game or game time. In an ideal world everyone would get equal game time but when you've got a squad of 17, 18 and you might have seven subs sitting on the bench it can be really difficult as a manager to, what do you do, who do you take off and it can be a bit demoralising for the girls if they're always losing because you're giving kids game time. We've actually learnt that we have that sticky number now this season so our aim for next season is to actually have an A and a B team so where the weaker players will be into a B team that will be getting full game time each week and that will either be compensated with a recruitment campaign to get more new players and or setting up a few players from the younger age group to facilitate that B team. Next we'll talk a bit more about managing people and the players. How would you go about building confidence in players who might be more shy or anxious than some of the more extroverted players? We have got some very extrovert players and people and we've got some very shy girls as well so I've said from the get go it's always to make sure that they're included. To not get, when the kids have to pair up we pair them up as opposed to letting them pair up themselves because invariably what will happen is the friends will all pair up and there'll be a few of the quieter girls or girls that don't go to school with a lot of these girls will be left alone so I think it's very important to recognise from the beginning that there are some girls who are going to be shy but you really need to watch them and make sure that they are included and even if that means having a chat with some of the other girls to say look make sure X or Y is included in this. And splitting up friend groups as well because that's not always a great dynamic and at the end of the day even though yes we want it to be fun we also want them to make sure that they can play with other people, it's a team sport so they should be able to play with everybody so we're very conscious of making sure that everyone is included. Do you have any routines around feedback for players about say how you talk to them before or during or after matches? The routines would be that when we're in the dressing room before a match I'm with the girls and we will go through what we need to do at the training session but I'll reiterate that before the match. I also get them to talk to each other and really do encourage their support on the team and I have to say that they're all very good when they're on the pitch it's always like great ball so and so or hard luck so and so or well done and they've got a great morale with each other and I think that it's testament to the girls that they play a few different team sports together and you can really see the reflection there. Again we'll also talk to them at half time and if they're losing at half time it's really important to give them that boost to say keep the heads up, keep going, it's only half time. Again a football can really turn around and I'd often say to them if they watch certain premiership matches where you know and again it turns around within the last few minutes so you know to always keep going until that final whistle and they do, they really do take that on board and I think that that's something great about our team. How supportive would the wider Crowd United set up be now in terms of I suppose pitches, equipment, admin and just coaching, education? Yes the club is a small club, it needs, the facilities do need to improve and they are about to do that. What I have noticed is and I have actually had similar female managers from other clubs note that the support still is not there for girls teams in spite of you know the big changes that we've brought in and the fact that there are a lot of teams but unfortunately across the board I think that girls teams within the whole set up of from the FAIs down are not supported as well as their male counterparts. Is there a shared philosophy now at the club, Crowd United for how teams just play and behave or is it kind of just I suppose each manager gets to set their own approach and do what they want with the players? Unfortunately not, I'd love to see a kind of a philosophy of football within the club that this is how we play and this is what we do but unfortunately there isn't someone there to take on the academy really to sort of say look this is our philosophy of football so it is very much down to the individual manager and how they coach their team. Would you like to know as much as any of the other age groups, managers or coaches or I suppose the women's team as well just to create a pathway for the players? Well we did set up a kind of a group for the female teams within the club where we would get together regularly just to discuss certain things. It would be more to do with girls from teams stepping up into older age groups. Even down to things like have we got enough jerseys, have we got enough equipment, what we can do to kind of improve the girls teams within the club. There are a couple of initiatives that were set up through the SAI, things like in her boots and that kind of thing which is great to see, it's great to see a bit of improvement and we sort of do try to collectively come together to implement those philosophies into the club within the female teams. Next then we'll talk a bit more about I suppose your leadership style and your management principles when it comes to soccer. So I suppose how would you describe yourself as a manager? Would you say you're more of a teacher, motivator, more friendly or would there be any other way you could describe your leadership style? I try to be the motivator and I think it's really important. So there's four of us in coaching within this particular age group for the girls, myself as the manager and three other males. It was really important that I took on the role of manager because I think it's really important for the girls to see that there is a female manager. I think there is still a lot of sexism and botany within female soccer, even from the top level down. So that was very important. And then the individual coaches have very, we've all got something to bring to the table. So one of the coaches is the next teacher so he has a very sort of structured way of doing his coaching which is brilliant. And then the other two coaches have both played football at quite high level and one looks after goalkeeping and I have my goalkeeping licence as well so I can help with that, with the goalkeeping. So I think we all bring something to the table which I think is really important when you're setting up any team that you have people with lots of different skill sets to bring to the table. Next in we'll talk a bit more about discipline. So how would you go about handling discipline when it comes to stuff like late arrivals, poor efforts or negative behaviour towards other team members? Well we do make sure that we do instil discipline within the girls. We've been fortunate enough that we don't have people consistently late. If someone is late for a session, it's a one off, it's fine, nothing gets said. But I think the most important thing is to make sure that they listen. I think that young kids have a tendency when you're explaining something that they will sit and they will talk. But that goes back to what I kind of said earlier about separating certain groups and separating individuals and I think as a manager and a coach it's just to be aware of the dynamics within the groups. There's so many things that you can pick up on and also to see if you can pick up on bullying, you can pick up on a multitude of things. So it's very important to be structured and to instil discipline with them. Next in we'll talk a bit more about the culture around your team. So is there anything in particular you do to build the culture within your team like things like team morning sessions or team talks or just any off pitch activities or traditions? Yes, so the first thing we do is when everyone arrives we start the warm up because obviously people are coming in and sort of dripping dry at five minutes early, ten minutes early. So we're fortunate enough that we've got that to ten minutes so we can start the warm up so the kids arrive. Once we've done all our mastery skills we will sit for five minutes and I will talk to the girls. So we could talk about what they've done during the week, have they played any stuff at school or at home or whatever, what have they done, what did they do and it's a great time for them to, some of them might say I played today and I scored three goals or whatever. They'll talk about watching soccer on the telly and what they've learnt from it. Those few minutes at the beginning are really important and we also have a few minutes at the end of each session just to say what we've learnt today, how we can implement that in our games moving forward. We do try and get the girls together at the end of the season to take them out on a little day or evening away for the bonding session. What would you say now would probably be the most difficult moment you've had as a manager so far, maybe a heavy defeat or a loss in the high-five game. How would you manage that with third? I know obviously with younger children it would be a lot of crying or very emotional third. How would you go about sort of handling that aspect? We did have a cup semi-final last season where we played Aston Wright and they were in the league above us. The cup games were between the two leagues, Division 1 and the championship. So we were Division 1 over the championship. We did really well to get to the semi-final. We knew we were going to come up against a tough opponent but by half time we were 5-0 down and it was the first time I'd seen a girl drop their head. Our goalkeeper wanted to come off, she didn't want to play anymore. So we really had to navigate how we were going to make the changes. We knew we weren't going to win the game but it was about finishing the game and trying to keep the girls motivated and keep their heads held high. So we swapped around, we put another girl who is a top goalie in goal and she did really well and we changed the game. But in the end we knew let's just get everyone on for game time, it was a semi-final. It was really difficult because it was the first time we had two but we subsequently found out that there were older girls in the opposition team playing, some of which were selected for Galway County as well. So I actually let the girls know that they were playing against older girls. I think it's really unfair. I should have put in a report to the Galway FA and that's lessons learned on my behalf to realise that not every manager plays fairly and it was important for me to let the kids know that they were up against opponents who were a year older than them. That was a really tough defeat but we muddled through, we got there and I just reminded them how well they did to get to the semi-finals and to get to the semi-finals against a league above them as well. So fortunately we haven't had anything like that against them but we learnt a hard lesson to ensure that our opposition teams are playing a fair team within the right age group and if they're not that we do need to put in a complaint to the FA afterwards. Looking ahead now to the rest of the season and I suppose beyond that as well, what was your main goal to be announced to this group? The main goal is to make sure that everyone is back for next season. We don't lose any players. We're fortunate enough to have not from the get go, we haven't lost any players, we've gained players but I'm not the type of person who if a child was to walk away to just let them go without finding out why, giving feedback, telling them to come back it's an open ended doorway if they were to walk away and I understand that particularly now as we get older a lot of kids will choose other sports and that's fair enough but we will always let them know that they can come and join the team again whenever they want to. From where you stand now, how would you see the general face of girls football involving and is there any support for changes you think would make a big difference for grassroots girls teams out there? I think there's a huge amount of work still to be done. I think we are making progress. I think that there's some great people involved, just individuals in lots of different clubs that I've met along the way who really want to improve girls soccer and we are getting there but I think that like with any organisation you're governed from the top. I think when you see how the Irish women's team, how well they've done but yet how they're literally paying for their manager that was organising buses and planes and there's so much more work to be done than I think in terms of grassroots. The realisation from individual clubs that girls teams do actually matter and that they really need to make more effort with the girls teams and that soccer is just not a boys sport anymore, it's an equal sport and I strongly believe that girls and boys should be trained together up to at least the age of 11 and until we kind of get people to realise that that is the case we're going to have a long way to go. What sort of advice would you give a player that may be on the fence of joining your team that I suppose might be a bit nervous about stepping in, it could be their first time playing soccer, sort of how would you go about trying to help them and have them want to enjoy it? So I would always say come along, give it a go, there's no commitment. You can come to a session, if you don't want to come to the next one, come to the one after that. I would also engage with their parents and let them know how they did at that particular session and how well they were doing. I think it's really important to, if a child is kind of introvert to really keep an eye on them and I know that can be hard because when you're trying to coach a whole team it is hard to account for an individual but I would say if they were nervous maybe just even say to their parents just to hang around for a little while, particularly when they're really young. I think we've kind of gone beyond that at this stage but I think it's important to the rest of the teammates and getting the rest of the girls to encourage the player and be kind to them. I think that's a really important gesture is to just make sure that everyone's kind to each other. Okay so we're almost done now so just before we wrap up I'm just going to ask a couple more questions about the team. So would you have a favourite coaching drill for the team and if so what is this? Favourite coaching drill? There's a few kind of little fun games that we do that we've actually adopted them from premiership themes that do them. It's like combing on the floor and it's like bouncing up and down, making different movements and they have to grab the comb and whoever grabs the comb first they love that one. Again if they think it's just a game but it's all about teamwork, hand-eye coordination or eye-ball coordination. So the other ones that they love is we do with our ball mastery skills, we'll do our usual ones but then we'll bring on a Vidan or a Nessie step over and they love doing these and that can be quite competitive but it's great and when I see them doing those skills in a match it really does make my day and I say it when at the end you did a great Nessie there and they didn't even realise that they did it and that's the beauty of it. What would be your best moment so far in this group of girls? I suppose the best moment we've had so far is that we got to play in Terryland so when they were under 11 we got to the final in Terryland and we won that final. Again it's not about winning but it was about just the achievement that how far they had come and how happy they were to arrive at Terryland and go away 90 grand and walk out and do a performance and to win the cup and bring that home. So that's been their most exciting moment to date as well and they want to strive to get there again so they know if they work hard and put in the effort that they could be there again this year which is great. And then just one final question, what's your favourite thing about being a coach? I think just seeing the joy on the girls' faces when they go out to play and whether they win or lose they're a great team and just to see how far they've come each week that they never drop their heads, they keep going and we really are blessed to have such a great group of girls. There's no messing, there's no, it's all just good camaraderie and it's a joy, they really are genuinely a pleasure as a coach and if they weren't would I do it? Probably not but it genuinely is a joy to go out and coach them each week. Okay so that's just to answer all the questions so thank you very much for coming on and speaking. Thank you.