All Stars Cricket is saving my cricket club. In our second year of the programme we have half a century of All Stars with associated parents, grandparents and siblings.  They offer help, hindrance and hilarity and a mixture of heartwarming and heart stopping moments – #bigmoments We have 3 teenage Activators (to aid this slightly aging one) who were easily tempted to get involved – 3 hours of free training, hours to record for DofE, […]

I tweeted this.   Twitter doesn’t give the opportunity to form a full argument, so here goes. Netball is the number one team sport played by women and girls, 1.7 million children play in school and over 180,000 play weekly (https://www.englandnetball.co.uk/partners/) Having searched the England Netball website I could not find any information about male netball – there is clearly, and IMHO rightly, a focus on their core audience of women and girls. The netball […]

I’ve spent the last 6 years as a parent trying to encourage my little boy to be confident to try new things, to make decisions and be independent, and to ask questions if he doesn’t understand stuff. Over the last couple of months he has decided that he is confident to cross the road on his way to school without waiting for me to be with him. We have spent most mornings up until this […]

When I was a kid (7/8) my dad got an old set of golf clubs cut down to size for me to play with. He took me for a few golf lessons with a pro at an indoor centre. He let me accompany (caddy for) him when he was playing informal competitions and he took me to the driving and practice range. I never played a round of golf and didn’t want to. Being able […]

The Stag Do. A group of blokes, associated with the groom through friendship or family, get together to undertake activities they’d never otherwise do.   This is usually followed by copious amounts of alcohol leading to a hangover to remind the condemned man what he’ll be missing out on once the knot is tied?! My two last experiences of “The Stag Do” shared Clay Pigeon Shooting as one of the activities. OK, lets get one thing […]

I have just read the following article and it got me thinking. http://www.superhumanperformance.org/blog/2015/11/13/express-yourself Using the skating/boarding/BMXing example it is clear that with the correct environment skills can develop through self-led practice and peer support. Competition in terms of formal rankings etc is not present, but clearly the desire to improve is.  This seems to give rise to a supportive culture or community. Everyone is on the same team, no one is worrying about others getting […]

I’m sure we’ve all heard the phrase “Children are not mini adults”. I’ve been mulling over the idea that maybe “Adults are big children”. Here’s why. Across many sports and physical activities it seems the number of young children having a go are pretty good. I’d suggest that we are becoming increasingly good at kiddy-fying our activities to appeal to children. Smaller teams, more time playing, focusing on fun and inclusion. In some forward thinking […]

Having delivered a week of a Closing the Gap Summer School with Create Development I found myself challenged in new ways. The ethos of the project is around empowering pupils to make the transition from primary to secondary school by raising their awareness of the skills (Learning Powers) they have and need in order to be successful in their new environments. The challenges for me were manifold: A target audience with whom I had little […]

Running, managing and maintaining a successful youth section at any voluntary sports club is a challenge. The first challenge is to define what makes the set-up successful. Is winning junior leagues success? Is having huge numbers of players success? Is helping players gain representative honours success? Is providing a pathway into senior participation success? Is it possible to achieve all of the above? In an ideal world it probably is. The reality for many clubs […]

We are currently experiencing an attendance boom at both badminton and cricket sessions with which I am involved.  With a bit of foresight I have managed to get to a situation where I have some L1 coaches, parents and experienced players in place who are willing and able to help out.  By coincidence this has all been happening in a period during which I’ve been involved with reviewing Coach Education programmes.  Part of this has […]