Coaches Corner

Currently in Australia there is a 'scandal' involving a professional sports club and the possibility that a sports science 'expert' mislead them into breaking the WADA code last year. As science delves into more specific areas of sporting performance and improvement, the depth of knowledge into 'smaller' areas increases while the range of different areas also increases.  This is an important and logical consequence of the scientific process, but it means that it is increasingly difficult for a coach, who is generally held ultimately responsible , be be sufficiently knowledgable to challenge experts about all the areas for which he/she is responsible. Even though this particular issue has been around in Australia for many months, reading  this article about the investigations  made a connection for me between this problem and the Global Financial Crisis. From reading about the GFC in books like Michael Lewis's, 'The Big Short',  it seems c

I just saw this article on the new 'Head of Performance' for England's women's cricket team , and it got me thinking about what exactly a coach is in the 21st century. English football and ML Baseball have probably been ahead of the curve for a very long time, by describing what everyone else calls a coach to be a 'Manager'.  It is actually a much better description of the sort of role that a coach actually does. In American professional sports there is usually a General Manager who has responsibility for the team above that of the Head Coach. The AFL in Australia now has a role of Performance Manager who sits, in theory, next to the Head Coach, as well as General Manager of the Club. Cricket generally has a coach, who is a manger, and usually now a Performance Manager as well. Despite the various titles and job descriptions, the common bond shared by the Manager, Performance Manager, and other coaches around the world is that, if the team isn'