Oceania Football Confederation (OFC) Technical Director Jim Selby has this week completed a series of intensive coach training workshops in the Solomon Islands capital Honiara.

The OFC Technical chief’s program was aimed at currently practising coaches who would benefit from follow up training.

Forty-nine affiliate coaches of the Solomon Islands Football Federation (SIFF) attended the five day program which was divided into three segments:

• Women’s Football Coaches Workshop

• National Soccer League and High Performance Coaches Workshop

• Potential Instructors Workshop

Eleven coaches attended the Women’s Football Coaching Workshop where they learned that women’s football should undertake all the same training and playing standards as are evident in Solomon Islands men’s football. This workshop covered the fundamentals of player development as well as practical training methods.

Local women’s coach Barnabas Loloito attended the workshop and told SIFF Media that his understanding of the roles and responsibilities of coaching women footballers has been greatly enhanced by the workshop.

Loloito said he was pleased to observe new coaching techniques and expects that this new knowledge will quickly prove effective on the playing field for local male, and female, footballers.

The second component of the course was attended by twenty two senior coaches active in the Honiara Football Association DJ League Premier Division.

The participants were taught about their roles as high performance coaches and also learnt about developing training schedules for competitions.

The High Performance Coaches Workshop also covered session planning, fitness testing and performance analysis areas which have become even more important since the start of the O-League championship in Oceania.

A new introduction to the local coach education scheme was the SIFF Potential Instructors Workshop which was held on Saturday. According to Selby, the aim, eventually, is for Member Associations of OFC to have local coaching instructors.

‘This will enable Member Associations to have local experts who will develop coach education courses that best fit their conditions and resources’ Selby said.

The introductory Potential Instructors workshop should pave the way for a Coaching Instructor’s course for SIFF coaches in the coming year.

SIFF Development Officer, Noel Wagapu, said that these workshops are very important for local coaches.

‘They have added to their knowledge base some modern techniques for coaching and this will be a big benefit for our local clubs and players’ Wagapu said.

The participants in these coaching course will be able to immediately implement their freshly honed skills and new knowledge with the 2009/10 football season in Honiara now currently in full swing.

Courtesy of SIFF Media