Very uncomfortable

As if it wasn't bad enough having to drive to Bristol and back to deliver training to our southern England managers I was also still suffering from the cold/virus I've had since last Monday.

The symptoms were originally those of a head cold but have now progressed to dry rasping cough (having lost my voice for three days), headaches, fever and shakes. Add to that having to spend 2 ten minute sessions on the toilet at service stations on the M42 and this was hardly the best preparation for delivering the topic of Positioning & Movement at Restarts and Open Play at the County FA as part of my development as an Instructor.

I arrived early, set up and readied myself for the 55 minutes I had been asked to deliver. It started well with the group reluctantly giving up volunteers to participate in my opening demonstration of positioning at restarts using a magnetic board but they dried up and I wanted the floor to open up and swallow me whole. On at least two occasions I honestly felt like walking to the back of the room and asking Deefor or Mr Steve to take over!

I than asked two groups to begin an exercise on identifying issues that they had struggled with in open play, recording them on a flipchart before getting the other group to help resolve them. At this point I headed for the corridor and some feedback from Jaybee, Deefor and Mr Steve. They seemed to think it was progressing ok but I felt awful as I was getting nothing back from the group.

When I came back into the room and reviewed the flipcharts I realised that I hadn't been anywhere near specific enough about the group exercise and I had very little on the paper which related to positioning & movement. I worked through the issues, those related to my topic and (fatally) those unrelated. The time got away from me and my well planned session, complete with timings went awry as I over ran by around 7 minutes.

Mr Steve gave me some great feedback and picked out the points I'd already identified for myself as well as some new ones. He also found a lot of positives and gave me some things to work on. Now I have to wait to see if Ray Olivier thinks I have done enough to earn my Registered Instructor status. It may be that I have to deliver (and be assessed) on another topic before he's satisfied I have what it takes.

At the moment I am realising that it is a lot harder than it looks. In a lot of ways, it's just like refereeing in that I made some "schoolboy errors" but with the assessment and feedback, I know which areas to work on. I suppose the secret is to ensure the same issues don't come up time and time again. So I wait to find out and in between times I have been asked to close the second Sunday in December to help on the next Basic Course for New Referees, so I can't have been that bad!