Welcome to the Coaching @ Wests Hub!

Wests Kaiako (Kaiako: coach or teacher) is a community of and for the 120+ coaches of Western Suburbs. The goal of the Wests Kaiako is to create a place where Western Suburbs coaches can learn from each other and grow their coaching skills. Check back here regularly and also keep an eye out for the monthly Wests Kaiako Newsletter to keep informed of the wide range of coaching resources available to our awesome coaching community.

Wests coaches meet up

An important part of being a community of coaches at Wests is to regularly get together with likeminded coaching peers. Wests holds (semi) monthly informal coaches meetings during the season at the Wests club rooms at Endeavour Park. Typically these meetings will include a brief coaching related session facilitated by a special guest speaker, followed by a few quiet ones at the club bar. Keep an eye on your email for the invite.

The last Wests Coaches meetup for the season will be at the Endeavour Park club rooms at 4pm Sunday 4th September. This session will be a wrap for the season and an opportunity to discuss what you’d like to see more of or less of next season as a Wests coach. The Western Suburbs Coaching Development Plan has just about completed its first year, and the club is interested to hear from you with what went well, what we could improve on and what sort of resources would be useful to you next year. This 30 minute session will be followed by a general catch up and beverages that can be purchased from the bar.

The invite for this session will be sent out later in August to all Wests coaches. Alternatively, you can go into events in your Friendly Manager portal to accept the invite.

Managing your team

Gone are the days where Wests coaches need to track player details in manual spreadsheets or find the last email to contact players! From 2022, Western Suburbs has adopted the excellent Friendly Manager club management software. Friendly Manager allows all Wests coaches to have up to date player and player contact details in one central place…if a player or parent updates their email address or phone number, then that update is reflected instantly in your team portal. From within your team portal you can manage your team, set up events for your team, send a mail directly from Friendly Manager (and track who has received and opened it) and upload resources for your team. To learn how to manage your Wests team, have a look at this short video in your Friendly Manager resources.  (Friendly Manager login required to view the video). If you don’t have access to Wests Friendly Manager, please email the Coach Coordinator or the Club Admin with details of the team that you are coaching.

Wests Coaching Resources

There are a lot of excellent coaching resources out there from Capital Football, NZ Football, YouTube and football websites. We’ve done the hard work for you and collated the best of these in your Wests club portal. To access these log into the Wests club portal (here – Friendly Manager Login – Western Suburbs), click ‘My Profile’ and then ‘Resources’. Whether you are looking for the latest 11+ drills, junior or youth playing cards, how to add game scores in Comet, information on the retreating line, or useful team management/substitution mobile apps….you’ll find it under your coaching resources in your club portal.

The Coaching Manual

One of the best football coaching resources on the web is the excellent www.thecoachingmanual.com website. The Coaching Manual is a website dedicated to football coaches working with players from 4 years old through to senior footballers. The Coaching Manual has many hundreds of searchable videos, drills, games, session plans, interviews and articles. It also has football specific diagramming tools for those coaches that want to draft up their own plans, easy templates to design your own session plans and even a tool to recommend a structured season plan. To subscribe to this great football coaching resource would normally cost you around $125 per year; however Wests is providing a FREE individual premium subscription to every first kicks, junior, youth and senior coach at Western Suburbs. To be eligible for this free subscription, you need to be registered as a Wests coach on Friendly Manager. To register your TCM account please contact your grade convenor or the Coach Coordinator with the grade that you coach and the name of the team.

Wests FC Kaiako Forum

The awesome folks over at the Oceanic Football Confederation (OFC) have kindly offered to host a forum chat group for Western Suburbs coaches on the OFC Learn platform. The Wests forum is the place to talk online with your coaching peers at Wests; ask questions, share training tips, and learn from each other. You will also find dozens of example junior session plans created by Wests coaches for inspiration for your own session planning.
Beyond the Wests forum, OFC is a great source for online football courses, articles, Oceanic football news and other football related communities of interest. If haven’t already received a registration request – register at OFC Learn here, and join the ‘Western Suburbs FC Kaiako’ group here.

Wests funded coaching courses

This year, Wests is funding the Capital Football coaching courses for all of our club coaches for introduction to coaching courses, level 1 coaching and referee courses, and level 2 coaching and referee courses. We will also fund (through a simple application process) coaches who wish to go through the more advanced level 3 coaching courses.
The first round of first kicks and junior coaching courses for Wests coaches have been run by Liam Mulcahy (Ole’s new Head of Pre-Academy and Coach Education Advisor). Public courses are also being run regularly by Capital Football and can be booked here. For the introduction, and level 1 and 2 courses, select the option for Club Funded and Pay Later in Comet. Please note to qualify for Wests funded Capital Football courses, you must be currently registered as a Wests coach at the time of the course. Check with the Coach Coordinator if you are not sure whether you are registered as a coach, or look in the Membership section of your Friendly Manager profile.

Wests Coach of the Month

‘Wests Coach of the Month‘ is an opportunity to recognise the hard work that our coaches do every training, game day and behind the scenes for our footballers.

Congratulations to July 2022 Wests Coach of the Month, Mike Wilson, coach of U10 Keas Girls team! Have a look on our coach of the month page for the details of Mike’s nomination. Mike, please see Jo Todd at the club to collect your Coach of the Month prize pack.

Nominate your coach for the August 2022 ‘Wests Coach of the Month’ by completing this form. Please include a high quality photo of your coach working with their team.

Wests Youth Coach Cohort

We are proud of our awesome youth coaches that give back to our football community through coaching our clubs youngest players in First Kicks. If you are aged between 13-18 years old and would like to sign up to coach First Kicks, please reach out to the First Kicks convenor or Coaching Coordinator.

Coaching First Kicks is also an excellent way to fulfil the volunteer service element of the Duke of Edinburgh award.

Coaching Juniors Information

Coach Support Information

Refereeing Juniors Information