‍As the demands on football clubs in Australia increase year on year, coaches are having to spend more and more time on administrative tasks, to meet compliance standards, resulting in less time on the grass.

For NPL and state league clubs, rep programs and academies, the challenge is delivering a professional approach to player development with limited time and resources. The playing philosophy needs to carry through every age group, coaches need to work towards shared goals, and player progress needs to be measured beyond the match statistics.

Behind every one of those clubs sits a technical director, academy manager or director of football doing the same job: keep the coaches organised, keep parents informed, keep players developing, and still find time to actually coach.

Across the country, a growing number of these clubs are running everything through XPS Network. We sat down with sixteen technical directors to discuss what makes the platform stand out for them, and the same five reasons kept coming up.

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Spend more time on the grass instead of in front of the computer. This makes my life so much easier.
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- Pat Hedges, Technical Director, Gold Coast Knights

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One System, Less Chasing, More Coaching

For most technical directors, the day doesn’t stop at session plans. It’s parents asking for updates, coaches needing direction, and every department, from junior development to the first team, pulling in a different direction with a different tool.

The directors we talked to described the same turning point: once the calendar, sessions, performance data and communication all lived in one place, the hours that were taken up switching between apps and chasing paperwork, went back into actually running the club.

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It’s been huge. XPS has allowed us to centralize that information, talking with the technical leads who run different areas of the club, with parents, and with our coaches.
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- James Coutts, Director of Football, Redlands United FC

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Player Development for Every Stage

Individual Development Plans (IDPs) mean every assessment, goal and note a player ever gets doesn’t disappear at the end of a season. It builds into one dashboard that follows them through the club, year after year, so a player’s progress becomes something the club can actually see, not something a coach has to remember. On top of that, it becomes visual feedback that is easily shared with players and their parents.

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Our under-13 to under-18 boys and girls sit down with us to discuss their assessments and individual development plans. Their scores, goals and development plans are all recorded and stored in XPS, so we have everything in one place to guide those conversations.
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- Michael Matthews, Technical Director, Springfield United FC

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A Clear Plan for Coach Development

Player development by default gets most of the attention, but nowadays, coach development is becoming a big priority.

With XPS, clubs now have dashboards for their Coaches, logging Training Visits, TD notes on Matchday Observations, Coach goal setting and much more. Coaches are building session plans, creating drills, importing their IP from years back and providing high quality video feedback, all in one place. 

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Coach development is now the biggest section of our accreditation audit. The way we’ve set it up gives coaches living proof of what was discussed in a mentoring session, not just a once-a-year sit-down that gets forgotten. 
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- Stuart Kelly, Technical Director, Virginia United FC

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Parents, Players and Coaches on the Same Page

A quick message to the team, a reminder to parents, a post about upcoming events or an announcement across the whole club, coaches can handle it all through XPS.

When training times, venues or plans change, everyone involved gets notified. Whether coaches are managing one squad or coordinating a whole club, it’s easier to keep everyone informed, get questions answered and stay organised.

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Coming to Magic with XPS has been fantastic in terms of time saving. Communication with parents has been really effective, coaches are organized, and players feel part of the club in what they receive from us.
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- Jake Goodship, Academy Director, Magic United TFA

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Local Support | Professional Resources | Ease of Implementation

One of the biggest challenges clubs face is getting buy-in from staff. There are various systems and processes coaches are expected to follow and learn, but keeping track of this is very difficult. For a technical director juggling a lot of teams, coaches and limited time, this is an everpresent issue.

At XPS, onboarding and support is critical. Along with local support and a structured implementation process, the XPS Academy platform provides clubs major relief in this area. Each coach can log on and complete high quality courses, purpose built to ensure they get as much value out of the platform as possible. Once staff understand how XPS will work for them, life becomes much easier.

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The thing with XPS is it allows you to tackle everything together. It makes this really big task seem a lot, lot smaller and more streamlined.
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- Matthew Upton, S&C Coach, Noosa Lions FC

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For Olympic FC, the priority is to have Coaches on the pitch, as much as possible. Leveraging XPS, they are cutting down the time coaches spend on operational tasks, giving them freedom to focus on what they really want to.

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We try to make the coaching job as easy as possible. We have a wide range of coaches, and not all of them are tech-savvy, so we want to take as much of the groundwork off their hands as possible so they can spend more time on the grass.
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- Scott Guyett, Technical Director, Olympic FC

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Watch the full XPS Stories episode to see how clubs are supporting their coaches, guiding player development and making more time for what happens on the pitch.