'The game speaks to the players, not me'

In 2020, Adam Davidson returned to the UK from Australia.

The pandemic made sponsorship and visas difficult, meaning he couldn’t stay in a country where he had spent the previous five years working various roles, such as youth technical director at Dunbar Rovers FC.

Adam has since been appointed head of coaching at Priority Football Academy, based in Bristol, England. He has been there for more than a year, initially taking on the role of lead coach and performance analyst.

His coaching experiences and Masters degree in sports performance analysis mean Adam has always had a fascination with session design. 

SCW caught up with him to talk about something he has been trying recently - co-designing sessions with his players…

SCW: Firstly, what have you learned from the different places you’ve coached in?

AD: "I’ve changed massively as a coach. When I first started, I had a player’s mentality as a coach. I liked to think I was focused on development, but I was more focused on being competitive and winning. 

“I’ve sort of come full circle now. I am very much an advocate of a constraints-led approach in terms of manipulating the task a little bit, creating the environment for players to learn and trying to give them a bit more responsibility rather than them looking at me for answers and for advice on every single aspect of the game.

"It’s more about presenting them with problems and that they’re repeating the process of solving a problem and finding a solution. That’s probably my biggest change in how I coach.”

SCW: You have been trying to co-design sessions with players. What made you want to do that?

AD: “It was something we just did, because I got on well with the players and we had that kind of relationship where we bounced ideas off each other. If they liked it, I’d say, ’what do you want to change about it?’.

“I read a few papers. One of them, by Sam Robertson and Carl Woods, was called ’Learning by Design’, about what sports coaches can learn from video game designs. 

"They talk about co-design and how video games allow the person playing to customise it and give them control of the environment they are in.

"It’s rewarding when, three or four months on, you start to see intelligent players..."

"One principle I found really interesting was the control of feedback and help.

"When you play a video game, you get to choose whether you do the tutorial or not. I sort of changed how I guide and give feedback to players. I try to give them the option of ’If you need me, I’m here’.

"I’ll speak to them in certain moments when I think they need it, but for the most part, they’re in control of how much or how little help they get from me.

"That was difficult at first. But as I’ve learned to be more patient in their development journey, it’s massively rewarding when, three or four months down the line, you start to see intelligent performers - not just kids who are doing what coaches are telling them to do.

‘It’s been so interesting, having that journey with them and having a framework to work off.

"Session design is something that has always interested me because I much prefer it when the game speaks to the players rather than when I speak to them. 

"So if I can design a task that encourages them to do a particular thing, or guides them to try something, I’ll do that rather than telling them to do it.

"It’s changed how I intervene in a session. For example, if you have a goalkeeper who stays rooted to their line, or we’re playing a game and there are no goalkeepers and you have someone who is just staying back to block the goal, you could change the rules of the game to encourage them out of that zone by having thirds and saying ’if your team scores, the goal doesn’t count if any of your players are in the back third’.

"So now, without telling them ’stop being on the line’ - because it rarely works - you’ve created rules to encourage them to be more connected to the rest of the game.”