Hoops

Do you have to play elite to coach elite?

a lot of men are gynecologist's!!

Beveridge and Molloy were reasonable social/grade players at best - would not have made any local SA CABL training squads at their peaks - however they both certainly worked themselves into the ground to be as good as their physical talent allowed them to be and were "coaches" players in that they listened to instructions and were total team players focused on the win and not themselves - the social grade equivalents to Shawn Dennis rather than Shane Heal - .

Think you have to have played to have a feel of in game coaching but you certainly don't have to be an elite player to be an elite coach. However it certainly wouldn't hurt to be an elite player

Don't have to play elite level.

But I feel you have to have a degree of sympathy to the situations players sometimes find themselves in.


Knowing how a player thinks and what is running through his head is a huge help.

You want a coach to be able to see the game from a player's perspective sometimes.

Being an ex-player can help with that.

But you can also develop that perspective through experience as a coach.

Interesting topic here, on one hand you would like to think that someone who has a good coaching skill set with the experience of playing at the elite level would have a great chance at sucess with an elite team.

On the other hand, we all know that this isn't always the case, and in the end a good coach is a good teacher, communicator and people manager.

There is a huge gap between coaching elite level to that of juniors, however the main difference is that elite coaches will at least expect that their players already have sound fundamentals.

All elite players need to keep their fundamental skills finely tuned, this wouldn't be the elite coaches job to drive, it would be self driven, so the focus for an elite coach is what changes.

IMHO it would be an advantage, however not a necessity!