Ethos

The North Kelvin Sports Development Group was established in May 1999 to oversee the development of the North Kelvin Utd community football teams. Since then the club’s ethos has been to promote inclusiveness, opportunity and access for all irrespective of background.

As a community football organisation, North Kelvin Sports have always sought to offer education and volunteering opportunities through sport and championed the ideal that participation in sports is a right for all.

The club’s motto is ‘Oportunitas’, from the Latin meaning: fitness, advantage and opportunity.

North Kelvin Identity

NK players are encouraged to play on the front foot and be aggressive in and out of possession. This includes placing value in working hard for all our players. Some players will naturally have this instinct, where a lot of young players will need to be encouraged and reminded that without the hard work, getting positive results in their development and their scores on matchdays will be less likely. This will be achieved by focusing on both defending and attacking sessions and some key areas in the training environment, such as the following:

Positional Play

Players will be coached to learn how to manage space in and out of possession more efficiently. This will include some player rotation with players being asked to fill different positions in training and games and there should be an expectation that they will come to understand the demands of each individual position on the pitch in relation to the ball and their teammates. In training this should see the use of ‘Rondo’ type exercises or the coach encouraging ‘numbers up’ moments for the players to find success in possession of the ball and to learn how to direct the play defensively to find moments for success.

Problem Solve

Since the game is made up of thousands of decision-making moments every time they play, NK players will be challenged and encouraged to problem-solve during sessions. This is a big part of modern-day football and key to “understanding the game”. The coach will ask questions of the players throughout a training session on why we do certain things, allowing them to come up with the answers. Creating problem-solvers will largely come through promoting the use of dribbling, or quick passing, depending on the moment, and the player will be encouraged to figure out difficult moments and find a solution, without giving up possession cheaply.

Playing Forward

Our teams and players are encouraged to play forward when it is on to do so. We want to be aggressive with and without the ball and try control the tempo of the game. The NK playing style should encourage players to be positive and play the ball forward as a first and best option whenever possible. The coaching staff will encourage a Forward, Sideways, Back mentality, so that players understand that our intention is to go forward, but if we can’t do that, then retaining possession by going sideways or back is ok, when it is not on. Finding ways to keep possession with the purpose of getting to goal should be foremost in their mind when they have the ball.

Pressure

Coaching staff will ask that players have a willingness to run, and this will be demanded off the ball, as much, if not more so than on the ball. Players will be encouraged to respond quickly to losing the ball and try to win it back as quickly as possible when it makes sense to do so. The mentality of putting the team first should be very noticeable when the team does not have the ball with every player at the club understanding that hard work is expected at every activity and should become a feature of their game. The club would like their teams to be recognized as extremely hard working, which automatically makes their teams a difficult prospect for all opponents.

Training Structure

The training structure should underpin all of the above and should be designed to get these qualities to come out on match days.

Coaching staff should structure their sessions as follows:

1)     warm up

2)     game related practice

3)     conditioned game

4)     finish with a game to allow players to put into practice the lessons learned throughout the session.

All sessions should have a clearly defined theme to allow players to have a varied education in all aspects of the game. The coach has autonomy to decide which activities are best suited to the theme for the session. Sessions should be largely game-like (partially, or fully opposed) with room for some unopposed practices to focus on technical development.