life on our 2020 tour!

PREPARATION :

For both our Scholars and Staff, this tour was exiting, a chance for personal or team development and full of opportunities! Our role at APD leading up the the tour was to ensure all players and staff have the best possible experience and can take away as much as possible from the tour.

The main aspect of the tour was to organise various fixtures with pro clubs that our scholars can face and showcase their talent. We managed to arrange four challenging games for the tour that we felt would be a great experience for our players along with being beneficial to their performance. During the tour our scholars faced Nottingham Forest, MK Dons, Burton and Notts County FC. At APD we knew that these four fixtures would create a good opportunity for our players to improve their style of play and knowledge of the game not just on but also off the pitch.

During the lead up to the tour, our scholars were unaware of the teams they were about to face. We presented them with their upcoming fixtures once arriving on tour creating an exiting and focused atmosphere for both players and staff!

Along with preparation for the tour as a whole, at APD we belive that preparation for an upcoming game is vital for our scholars to meet their full potential and play at their highest level on the pitch. See below how we exicute this at APD :

Pre and post match meetings :

At APD we strongly believe that a pre and post meetings on game-day is vital for our players!

As stated above, on tour our scholars had four pro club fixtures. On the morning of each fixture our players would always have a pre match meeting. These meeting would be put in place in order for our coaches to inform the squad their expectations for the upcoming game and what their tactics and style of play will be. This tour was full of opportunities and had the ability for all of our scholars to develop as a player therefore all pre match meetings would enable them to gain knowledge and take advice from our highly experienced coaching staff.

Every fixture was different. All teams have their own style of play and their own objectives they wanted to achieve against us. This goes the same for us at APD. Before a game its important that each individual player is aware of the challenges they may face during the game and how to overcome them, this is vital for their own personal development. However, working as a team is how you win matches so our staff would ensure our scholars are aware of expectations for the game and what is needed to work hard as a team!

Post match:

Not only is preparation for a game crucial, so is a post match meeting/recap! All of our fixtures on tour pushed our scholars to their limits and developed them as a player. As a majority, in each game we showed outstanding talent and attitude to win. However, there is always room for improvement! On tour our players were sat down with our coaches and they would highlight their strengths and weakness during the game. Doing this enabled the team to learn and enable them to perform at a higher level during their next upcoming fixtures.

team building :

On tour one of our main objectives was to ensure our scholars develop not just as individual players but as a team!

During our time on tour before and after games we would ensure our scholars were learning and working together. We believe this had a huge positive impact on their performance and attitude as a team. Our coaches would provide challenges and team walks for our scholars on game-day or on a rest day.

All of our scholars we took on tour this October were fully engaged throughout and showed great amounts of respect and encouragement for their team mates and coaches. Due to them working so hard together as a team it meant that the performance on game-day was at a high intensity and beneficial to them all!