Developing a coaching workforce can be difficult. Coaches have different levels of experience, work across multiple teams and may only spend a few hours each week within your organisation.
Traditional workshops can provide useful knowledge, but their impact is limited if coaches return to their sessions and continue using the same habits.
Coach Challenge MatchPlay Cards help solve this problem by putting coach development directly into everyday practice.
The deck contains 70 practical challenges across ENGAGE, CHANGE and REFLECT. Each challenge gives coaches something specific to try, notice or reconsider within a real session.
Here are seven ways Head Coaches, Coach Developers, Directors of Sport, Heads of PE and Academy Leads can use the cards across a coaching workforce.
1. Introduce a shared coaching challenge
Choose one challenge for every coach to explore during the week or month.
The challenge could connect to an organisational priority such as increasing player ownership, improving questioning or creating more opportunities for decision making.
After coaches have applied it, create time for them to discuss what they noticed. Useful questions include:
- How did your players respond?
- Which players benefited most?
- What did you find difficult?
- What would you change next time?
Coaches may apply the same challenge differently, but the shared focus creates valuable conversations and helps the organisation develop a common coaching language.
2. Add purpose to coach observations
Coach observations can easily become a judgement of everything the coach did well or badly. This often leaves coaches with too much feedback and no clear idea about what to do next.
Before the session, invite the coach to select one card. The challenge then becomes the focus of the observation.
The observer can collect evidence connected to that challenge, notice how players respond and help the coach reflect afterwards. This creates a more focused conversation and encourages the coach to participate in their own development.
Instead of reviewing the entire session, both people can explore one behaviour in greater depth.
3. Create more practical coaching workshops
Coach development workshops should give coaches opportunities to experiment, make decisions and learn through experience.
Divide coaches into small groups and give each group a different Coach Challenge MatchPlay Card. Ask them to apply the challenge while leading or participating in a practical activity.
Afterwards, compare how the challenges influenced the coaches and players.
You could ask:
- What did the challenge encourage the coach to do differently?
- What effect did it have on the activity?
- How did the players respond?
- How could the challenge be adapted to another sport or age group?
This approach turns coaches into active participants rather than asking them to sit through another presentation.
4. Support new and developing coaches
New coaches are often overwhelmed with information. They may receive a handbook, session plans, safeguarding guidance and a long list of organisational expectations before they have delivered their first session.
Giving them one purposeful challenge creates a more manageable focus.
A new coach might begin with a challenge connected to learning player names, increasing participation or asking better questions. As their confidence develops, they can explore challenges that require more adaptation, observation and reflection.
The cards can also support mentoring conversations by giving the coach and mentor a clear starting point. Instead of offering general advice, the mentor can help the coach examine one specific behaviour and decide what they will try next.
5. Challenge experienced coaches
Experienced coaches need development too, but they may not benefit from receiving more introductory coaching content.
The cards can encourage experienced practitioners to question comfortable routines and explore different approaches. Ask them to choose a challenge that creates curiosity or requires them to coach differently from normal.
This could involve giving players more control, delaying an intervention, observing a different player or changing an activity without stopping it.
The aim is not to suggest that their current approach is wrong. It is to expand the range of options they can recognise and use.
Experience should not remove the need for curiosity.
6. Improve staff meetings and coaching conversations
Staff meetings often focus on fixtures, equipment, logistics and administration. These areas are important, but they can leave little time for meaningful coach development.
Select one card at the beginning of a meeting and give coaches time to discuss how they might apply it. Alternatively, ask one coach to share what they noticed after testing a challenge during the previous week.
Even ten minutes of focused conversation can help coaches learn from one another.
Coach Developers can also use the cards to replace broad questions such as, “How is your coaching going?” with more purposeful conversations about communication, player engagement, session design and decision making.
7. Build a season long coach development programme
The 70 cards can become the foundation of a simple and practical coach development programme.
Begin by identifying the behaviours and player experiences your organisation wants to strengthen. You can then select relevant challenges and organise them into monthly themes.
For example:
- Month one could focus on creating player engagement.
- Month two could explore choice and decision making.
- Month three could focus on questioning and communication.
- Month four could develop observation and noticing.
- Month five could strengthen reflection and future planning.
Each theme can include a shared challenge, a practical workshop, a coach observation and a short reflection conversation. This creates continuity without requiring coaches to complete another lengthy course.
It also allows development to happen during the sessions, meetings and conversations that are already taking place.
Create alignment without creating identical coaches
A consistent coaching workforce does not mean every coach must sound the same, use the same activities or follow the same script.
Consistency should mean that every player experiences the values your organisation considers important. Players should feel included, appropriately challenged and encouraged to make decisions, regardless of who leads their session.
Coach Challenge MatchPlay Cards help organisations create shared areas of focus while allowing coaches to retain their personality and respond to the needs of their players.
The cards provide a common language, but each coach decides how to apply the challenge within their environment.
Put coach development into everyday practice
Coaches are already leading sessions every week. The opportunity is to turn those sessions into practical professional development.
Coach Challenge MatchPlay Cards contain 70 challenges designed to help coaches ENGAGE their players, CHANGE their behaviours and REFLECT more purposefully.
They can be used to:
- Create shared workforce challenges.
- Improve coach observations.
- Facilitate practical workshops.
- Support new coaches.
- Stretch experienced practitioners.
- Strengthen staff conversations.
- Build an ongoing coach development programme.
The cards do not give coaches more content to consume. They give coaches meaningful actions to test, discuss and improve.
Explore Coach Challenge MatchPlay Cards
Clubs, schools and sporting organisations looking to support a complete coaching workforce can contact The Coaching Lab about workshops and exclusive pricing for orders of 15 or more decks.
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