AFCCT hold quarterly In-service evenings for all members of staff working and volunteering within the Trust. The purpose of these in-services is to keep everybody up to date with current best practice and improve the delivery of content throughout the wide range of programmes AFCCT deliver across Aberdeen City and Shire, particularly our After-School and Holiday Football Coaching programmes.

The theme for the latest in-service held this month was a Positive Coaching Scotland (PCS) Workshop which was delivered by Senior Scottish FA Community Coach Steven Sweeney. The interactive workshop is designed to provoke thoughts amongst the coaches on how they currently deliver programmes and reinforcing ideas as to how they can get the best out of all the participants they engage with by being a positive role model. The three key principles delivered on the night were:

Honour Our Game
Teach everyone involved how to honour and respect their team-mates, opponents, the rules, officials, and themselves.

Redefine Winning
Move the focus from the scoreboard to succeeding and winning through effort.

Fill the emotional tank
Build a young player’s confidence, motivation and resilience.

Throughout the Workshop the AFCCT members of staff were given different scenarios and situations based on the above concepts and asked to present how they could apply this positive coaching ethos at all of our current initiatives. The outcome of this was hugely encouraging with a lot of good practice being shared amongst the coaches which will be applied at our Football Centres currently running.

Aswell as doing a re-fresher with our own members of Staff, Steven and Scott Duncan from AFCCT and other members of the SFA North Region regularly deliver PCS Workshops to Quality Mark Accredited Clubs across the North East, most recently Dee Boys Club in Torry. A number of coaches and parents across Scotland only have the aim of winning which has been proven to be to the detriment of the national game and this is reflected in dropout rates within Football. PCS workshops are a vital tool in attempting to change this culture and creating a positive environment within Scottish Football where all our coaches and players can thrive.

For more information on PCS please see the below link:
http://www.scottishfa.co.uk/scottish_football.cfm?page=2907