Director of Football Update - Term 3 2023

Greetings to all members for the business end of the 2023 season.

This message contains: 

• Welcome back to Bay City Park.
• ECB Men's First Team vs Onehunga Mangere United, 5.30pm Saturday 12th August.
• ECB Women's First Team vs Waitemata, 11:00am Sunday 20th August.
• Season update.
• Upcoming events.
• Season reminders for parents, spectators, coaches, and players.
• Training resources for volunteers, coaches, parents, and players.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________ 

Welcome to term 3 of the 2023 season, the 2nd half of the season for our winter teams. Thank you to all members for your patience this season whilst Bay City Park has been out of action, with 'home' games taking place all over the North Shore for much of the season so far.

Whilst everyone at the club is excited to return to Bay City Park, we will need patience from all members as we work with council ground allocations to adjust training schedules over the coming month. We will communicate any changes to your team coaches/managers when we have them ready and in place, please wait for us to communicate to you. With 126 teams at the club, we do need to do this step by step. The good news is that there will be plenty of match day action at Bay City Park over the rest of the season, with a number of teams playing at Bay City Park this coming Saturday.

To help celebrate the return to Bay City Park, we are hosting our first ever home night game, with our Men's First Team hosting Onehunga Mangere United at Bay City Park, this Saturday 12th August, kicking off at 5.30pm. We hope to see the blue wave out in force, creating an atmosphere to remember for everyone at the club. The bar will be open. The u23s will also kick-off later than normal, starting the afternoon off at 3pm.

Following our first every night game at Bay City Park, our table-topping ECB Women's First Team will return home when they play Waitemata on Sunday 20th August at 11:00am.

Across the rest of the club, we are now into the business end of the season for our senior community teams, competing for cup and league honours across the grades. Division 1 Drum and Bays, ECB Evans, ECB Thomas, and ECB Ware are all currently placed second in their title chase, whilst ECB Pensioners and ECB Silver Foxes are in pole position in their respective leagues. We also have a number of teams locked in an all-Bays title battle to end the season, with ECB Team Masters and ECB Foreign Legion going head-to-head, as well as ECB RDS Women and ECB Blue Belles occupying 1st and 2nd place in their league. For senior football, please save the date for our end of year senior prizegiving, taking place on Saturday 7th October, doors open from 6pm.

For more ECB news, including ECB's signing of the NRF Gender Equity Charter, and former ECB player Tyler Bindon's signing at Reading FC, please head to https://ecbafc.nz/latest-news.

Across youth and junior football, we have seen great participation in both winter football and community programs. Registrations for our school and holiday programs are flying out of the door, whilst we have also seen the successful launch of our NZF Fantails Hub for junior girls on Friday evenings at Ashley Reserve. For more information on these programs, please head to https://ecbafc.nz/player-development-programmes, for NZF Fantails, please check out https://ecbafc.nz/new-zealand-football-fantails. Information for term 4 junior and youth programs will be released in the coming weeks, ahead of both junior and youth prizegiving's and tournaments taking place in the in the upcoming school holidays.

Thank you once again to every convenor, coach, manager, referee, and volunteer that has made the 2023 season possible. We will be releasing details for a volunteer appreciation night, taking place in September at Bay City Park.

Finally, an extended thanks to the board at East Coast Bays, who have safely navigated the club from COVID to FIFA WWC training venue over the past 4 years. The club is in a superb and exciting moment that would not be possible without the time, care, and vision of a dedicated group. A big welcome to Kelly Lear, Gail Henekon and Hiva Rastegar who have also recently joined the board.

A few reminders below to help everyone work together smoothly for the remainder of the season: 

• Please make sure pitches are vacated at allocated times so that the next group can set up and train.
• Please make sure all gear is put away securely before leaving for the night.
• Please submit your scores after games (even if you lose!)
• If you are training at the same time as a similar group and numbers are low, please take the opportunity to combine training groups and share the load between coaches. We have tried to allocate similar groups to train at the same time for this reason, gone are the days of training being cancelled due to low numbers.
• If your junior game is one-sided, use the NRF Game Day Challenge Point guide (at the bottom of this page) to try and rebalance the game so that everyone has an enjoyable experience. Too much challenge is demotivating, having things too easy is demotivating too. Either extreme is not great for learning either.
• If the weather (or the forecast) looks wet, please assume your training or game is going ahead unless we announce field closures, or you hear from your convenor or coach.

• If you need to contact our team to resolve an issue, keep communication brief and structured so that we can assist you quickly and easily. If the issue relates to game day, please allow a 24-hour cooldown to organise your thoughts before contacting us, this will also help us in giving the best support we can to members.
• If you are a spectator, please stand a few meters back from the side-line, behind any fences or ropes in place, cheer on the players, but avoid giving instruction to players that may conflict with messages from the coach.
• If you are a coach, please support equal playing time for all players over the course of the season.
• If you are a player, play hard, play fair, and make sure everyone in your team has a blast at training and games.
• If you are a parent, please use TeamReach solely for organising training and games, it is not an appropriate platform for sharing comment or opinion.

Below are some useful links to resources that will help enhance your football experience as a parent, coach, or player at East Coast Bays AFC. 

• NRF Junior Coaching Workshop
• NRF Junior refereeing workshop
• NRF Game Day Challenge Point guide NRF Game Day Challenge Point 2022 (002).pdf
• Performance Act (our Talent Development Program Mental Skills provider) parent workshop https://www.performanceact.com/parentinginsport
• ECB Parent-Player support guide ECB TDP 2022-23 Parent-player support guide .pdf

To find more information and resources like the links above, head to https://www.coachmate.sport/nz-football and download the CoachMate app for access to video resources from NZ Football, related to grade-specific coaching guidelines, injury prevention, game day support and training exercises for ages 5-18. Plus, specialist guidance for coaching mixed and female players of different ages.

We hope you all have an enjoyable time from now and until the end of the season. Please keep an eye on your inbox as we release specific updates for various parts of the club.

Joe Hall

Director of Football

East Coast Bays AFC