Tisam is one of the leading coaches in the Cook Islands, having followed the OFC Coach Education Pathway through the tiers all the way to last year’s A Licence.
“It’s challenging and gets you out of your comfort zone,” Tisam said of the A Licence. “All of the other coaches on the course are really high level and good to get knowledge off.”
With a lot of the other candidates based in New Zealand, including U-17 women’s coach Gareth Turnbull, coupled with his experience playing in New Zealand Tisam is well placed to make comparisons between the football in New Zealand and the Pacific.
“I think the style is a bit different between the Pacific nations and New Zealand,” he says.
“In terms of our football cuture, the philosophy and football style really hasn’t been developed yet in the Pacific, so this is where we go back home and work on that and develop it.
“We don’t play as much football as New Zealand and we don’t have the programmes set yet to develop coaches and players to the best of their ability but hopefully that will start to change.”
With Tisam bringing his learnings home to the Cook Islands there’s no doubt he will be among those helping make that change and he knows it will start with the U-17 women’s team and their performace during this week’s OFC U-17 Women’s Championship.
“It was good timing for me to take part in the A Licence with the U-17 Championship coming up,” he says.
“There’s things I need to do for the A Licence that I will be able to incorporate into what we are doing with the team and it’s good because it’s all still fresh in my mind.”
The Cook Islands will open their campaign at the 2016 OFC U-17 Championship this evening at 5pm (local) against Fiji.