Team Manager

The team manager is an important role as you are the central point of contact for communication with the committee as well as with your team.

Before the competition starts, your main job is to get players to register in your team.

After the competition gets underway, we ask you to keep in regular communication with your team. Many teams set up a group chat on something like WhatsApp or Messenger to ensure communications are easy to do and everyone gets a consistent message.

Before each game, it is good practice to check if anyone is unavailable so you know how many players you will have.

We do not currently allow players to fill in for a team if numbers are short for a given week but we will be discussing such a policy soon. We will advise if this is published. Regardless, for insurance purposes, under no circumstances is an unregistered player able to take the field in our competition.

If there are any issues within your team or other item with the competition, we would ask that these are communicated to the committee via the team manager and not individual players.

MySideline is the official administration system of Touch Football Australia. It includes a feature called MySideline Manager which can be used to access the list of players registered in your team. You should automatically receive access to this when you register a new team online. This section assumes that you already have access to MySideline Manager. If not, send a request to newcastlejuniors@gmail.com with the team name you would like access to.

You can access MySideline Manager using this link: https://manager.mysideline.com.au/login. To login, use the same email address and password you used to register the team. This link can be accessed via a desktop computer or mobile device. For more information about this feature, Please refer to https://touchfootball.com.au/mysideline/mysideline-manager/.

Note: if you have multiple teams linked to your MySideline account, you can only view one at a time. Click the menu item in the top left and then ‘Switch Role’ to view a different team.

Coach

For our junior competition, the team manager may also take on the “coach” role during the game or could delegate this role to someone else.

Managing substitutions

During games, one of the coach roles is to manage substitutions or to delegate someone else to do this. In touch football, players can substitute at any time and as many times as you like. This allows players to receive roughly equal amount of game time regardless of how many substitutes you have. In more competitive touch games, players do have dedicated positions (middles, links and wingers). However, for most social competitions players are likely to play in any position as needed.

If you have not done this before, the following is a relatively easy way of managing substitutions in a simple and fair way. This is just a suggestion so feel free to manage this as you see fit. Remember for our competition:

• 7s and 9s are played with 5 players on the field
• 11s and older are played with 6 players on the field

Write the player names in a list. This could be alphabetical e.g.

• Amy
• Bronte
• Christine
• Daisy
• Eve
• Fiona
• Georgie
• Hannah
• India

Start with a group of players in consecutive order e.g. if playing 6-a-side:

• Starting on the field: Amy, Bronte, Christine, Daisy, Eve, Fiona
• Substitutes on sideline: Georgie, Hannah, India

Never substitute players when you are defending as this could very easily result in tries being scored through the gap created by the departing player. Every time your team gets possession, substitute a single player using your ordered list e.g. Amy comes off and Georgie goes on. Just make sure that the player you are asking to come off is not currently involved in the play (e.g. about to catch the ball) as they will probably get very distracted when they hear their name being called out on the sideline. You can also substitute as many players as you like when a try is scored by either team so this is a great opportunity to make substitutes.

Substitutions must be performed on the sideline so the departing player should run off quickly so the new player can get on the field. You want to avoid having too many players on the field as this is technically a penalty to the opposition. The only exception to this is after a try is scored, players can enter the field to substitute as long as the departing player exits the field before play is resumed.

The next time you get possession, the next player substitution occurs e.g. Bronte comes off and Hannah goes on. This continues throughout the game, wrapping back to the top of the list once you reach the end. You could write it like this to make it easy to keep track of:

Some of the reasons why this method is suggested:

• It is simple as you don’t need to look at a clock in order to manage substitutions. You just substitute on every possession.
• By changing only one player each time, you limit confusion (e.g. one person’s name is being called out). If you substitute multiple players at once, it is quite common for teams to make a mistake (e.g. pass a player to a departing player who is not ready to accept it). This minimises this risk.
• Players are only off for a minimal amount of time so they won’t be constantly asking when they are going on. They will be substituting for the same player each time as well during the game so they can almost run it themselves.

Some further notes:

• At the very start of the game, ensure that the first player to come off knows so they can volunteer themselves for extra work knowing they will get an early break. You might want to leave the first substitution to start after a few (e.g. 3) possessions.
• If you only have one substitute, you could change to substitute after every 2 possessions so they get a slightly longer break on the sideline.
• You can adjust the starting line-up for each week to ensure that participation is fair across games. One way is to do this based on the round number i.e. in round 1, starting line-up begins with 1st player in list, round 2 begins with 2nd player in list and so on.

On-field coaching for 7s and 9s

For 7s and 9s, coaches may be allowed to coach on the field, at least 5 metres behind the team. This allowance will only apply for a limited period so please refer to the instructions provided by the club on this.

Please ensure that you keep encouraging the kids and help them enjoy their experience of playing touch. The referee will be in control of the game and coaches, players and spectators must respect the referee. Most of our referees for junior games are juniors themselves so it is important for their development that you do not challenge their decisions, even if you saw something differently.

Training

Some teams will have separate training sessions, some will not. There is no doubt that training with a coach will greatly assist players to improve their game and the overall team performance. However, training is completely at the discretion of each team. We do encourage you to at least organise a session or two outside of game times to help the kids with their ball skills and knowledge of the game.

Becoming a better coach

If you want to become a better coach of junior sport, there are a number of resources to help.

The Australian Sports Commission has a free online course for Community Coaching General Principles. This course is aimed for beginner coaches of any sport and takes a couple of hours to complete, either in one go or as you find time. Go to https://learning.ausport.gov.au/auth/login, register and find the course you want to do.

If you want to consider formal training for touch football, NSW Touch has a Foundation course (see http://www.nswtouch.com.au/coaching/) aimed at coaches interested in coaching on a regular basis (e.g. school teachers) or for representative teams.