Developing reflective practioners to improve both in the moment and retrospective player decisions.

Through his experiences as Scotland U16 Head Coach, Mr Chris Duncan brought Coach Logic into the Hockey programme at Edinburgh Academy school with the intention of creating a more player-led approach to match review. Yes, the phrase player-led analysis is banded about too regularly these days, but for Mr Duncan, he genuinely believes Hockey at the School has welcomed the development of getting more player involvement in video and match review.

Mr Duncan utilises the third-party analysis viewer feature within the Coach Logic video room often completing match analysis on Nacsport or GameBreaker and then uploading the xml to the video room allowing his school side to skip to relevant clips in the video.

Mr Duncan will also locate the key moments from the match and create video clips on Coach Logic that can be discussed in a collaborative manner in the Activity Feed. Highlighting just the key moments allows players to focus on the critical areas of the match, and crucially, not overload them with information. Focusing on just these key areas has shown to improve player interaction and input.

During our time working with Edinburgh Academy, we’ve completed workshops and also with the Scottish Blue Pups (U16), Mr Duncan’s other side. On the most recent visit Mr Duncan said “Your visit was eye-opening for the players and the coaches and really made us re-think our approach.”

Mr Duncan went on and said input from other sports like Mark Cairns (Coach Logic) from a rugby background and also coaches like Jurgen Klopp in football have provided ideas he’s experimented with in his squad.

In his own words:

“Currently, I’m trying to develop my athletes as reflective practitioners and tempting them to debrief their actions both in the moment and retrospectively. At the end of the day, the athlete is the decision maker on the field, so we should always try and direct the ability to assess and reflect to the point of the decision within our training sessions. The difficulty here in getting players to reflect, is trying to take their mind away from the outcome, but to focus on the process.

“I firmly believe that if players can learn this process, they will be able to problem solve to a higher standard and become better decision makers under pressure.

In addition to this I believe that the players will benefit from this approach with Coach Logic very much complimenting this. The benefit to the pupils will far outlast just their period at school.”

It’s great to have the support of Coach Logic is our match prep and review. The software has facilitated player led analysis during our season and major tournaments. The Coach Logic platform has played a big part in our team’s continued development and success.

‍Mr C. Duncan
‍Edinburgh Academy