Seven weeks to go… I think

Today marks seven weeks until the National Football (soccer) Team of Tonga, of which I am head coach, is supposedly leaving for our 2014 FIFA World Cup Qualifying matches in New Caledonia at this year’s South Pacific Games (SPG). At present the plan is to spend 10-14 days in Fiji prior to the tournament kicking off in New Caledonia on August 24^th and play a number of regional Fijian teams and other international sides who will be using Fiji as a training base before playing in New Caledonia.

Before training - still no training gear!

The team has been preparing for 13 weeks now and after coming through a fairly intense period of developing the side’s fitness we are now down to a final squad of 26 which will be trimmed to 20 for the qualifying tournament. I am incredibly happy with how the boys have transformed themselves into a team over the past three and a bit months and how the coaching staff (of which I have a Fijian assistant, an American strength and conditioning coach, three local assistants who we are grooming to take over national sides in the future and my Tongan Technical Director) have developed the boys’ technical and tactical ability over that time. Over 13 weeks we have gone from playing kick and rush football with no particular aim to keeping the ball on the deck and trying to play effective football. Needless to say I am incredibly proud of the way the boys have developed and they are a pleasure to coach. There are no egos in the squad, as you get at all levels in Australia, and the boys always give 100% in training and will try to comprehend what we ask of them and to put it into practice. I have even got the boys asking questions in training and requesting extra training, which for anyone who has worked in Tonga knows that Tongans asking for extra work of any sort is a rarity!

We recently had a FIFA official here in Tonga who was inspecting our facilities to ensure FIFA’s Goal Project money was spent properly; however the inspector had also been a national coach of New Zealand and has an intimate knowledge of Oceania football. On his final day here we played an ‘inter-club trial’ and the inspector said he was very impressed with the level of the boys’ play for a team from Tonga. A back-handed compliment if there ever was one, but a compliment none the less.

I say supposedly leaving, as while we have been preparing the squad for 13 weeks a spanner has recently been thrown into the works that mean our plans could change completely. As mentioned the first round of Oceania World Cup FIFA Qualifiers were to be part of the 2011 SPG in New Caledonia. However there are countries eligible to compete in the SPG that are not part of FIFA’s Oceania Football Confederation (OFC). One country, Guam (from FIFA’s Asian Football Confederation), had previously agreed not to compete in the football competition at the SPG as if they did play, FIFA would not recognise the SPG football tournament as World Cup Qualifiers for Oceania, as a team from Asia would be playing in the tournament. To put it into perspective it would be like Morocco or Brazil playing in the European World Cup Qualifying competition. Guam have now said they want to play in the football tournament - as is their legal entitlement with Guam being part of the South Pacific Games Council - however this now means the OFC will need to organise another tournament to act as the 2014 FIFA World Cup Qualifying competition for Oceania.

At the outset I saw this development as positive. With the SPG no longer being World Cup Qualifying, Tonga would have competitive warm-up matches in a serious tournament before World Cup Qualifying. However, I have since learnt the basic issue for football associations from countries in the region like Tonga is we cannot afford to participate in New Caledonia this September and then travel once more to another country in the region a few months later to play more games. With very little funding going into the game here in Tonga, apart from FIFA’s annual handout, it is an incredibly expensive project to send 20 players and four staff anywhere in the Pacific. From Tonga we can only fly directly to Fiji, New Zealand or Australia and once you add on connecting flights to a place like New Caledonia, then four weeks’ worth of accommodation, food, training and playing kits, medical and physiotherapy supplies the cost to send our team easily reaches six figures. Tonga simply cannot afford to spend up to one million Pa’anga (nearly 500,000 Australian Dollars) within three-six months to send one representative team to two competitions.

While nothing has been set in stone as yet, it appears 99% certain that Guam will exercise their legal right to play football at the SPG. So what does this mean for Tonga? From my perspective it is annoying. We have been preparing for 13 weeks on the basis that we would leave in seven weeks’ time and our preparation has been scheduled accordingly. Initial rumblings from OFC indicate a regional World Cup Qualifying tournament would now not be held until March, nine months away. This would basically mean the boys would have been training for 12 months without any competitive matches and would necessitate a change in schedule to ensure that while the boys stayed together as a group over the next five to six months, we would not train six days per week as is our current schedule. Ideally it would also mean we would play International Friendlies as a warm-up, however I can't be certain this would eventuate.

Bit of defensive shape work

If this does happen and Tonga will not be playing until March, 2012 and it also leaves my position in the air. As those of you who read this blog know, I am here as a volunteer and have found myself in the right place and the right time to be elevated to the position of national coach. My contract here is to finish on September 19^th (one week after I was scheduled to return from New Caledonia), so if I was to go home the Tonga Football Association (TFA) would need to then need to decide if they wanted me to stay on as their coach. Luckily for me, the TFA have indicated they want me as their National Coach and are willing to do what it takes to ensure I am in charge of the boys come March. However, monetarily they cannot afford any wages for me (which would will be modest at best, perhaps $500 Australian per week at the very highest end of the wage spectrum) for any longer than two months.

All things considered I would certainly put my hand up to come back a month earlier without pay to ensure the boys got a good 12 week intensive program in before the World Cup matches however that still means I would be home in Australia for four-five months before returning, what would I do? I have no idea, probably try and get a short term role in PR and in an ideal world I would be able to visit a few Australian clubs and potentially the AIS Football Academies to observe training and bring back those methods to the boys here to help them prepare for their Qualifiers. Maybe even follow in the footsteps of this man - http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport2/hi/football/13846140.stm. Don’t worry…. I know I’m dreaming!

Every Friday kids from all over Tonga come in for the national School's Competition - a few shots

Palangi United - The Volunteers' attempts at playing football here in Tonga

Men's team after 6-0 loss to National Champions... was only 1-0 at half time so not too bad!

Women's team after 4-2 loss to Popua... was an awesome effort to nab two goals, hopefully the blokes can do the same next week!

A Day in the Life of a Football Coach

This blog is dedicated to those who think that being a full-time football coach in Tonga, is in some way, shape or form a bit of a bludge. While I admit that, at times, in fact on many occasions over the past six months here in Tonga, I have had little to do apart from sit at Keleti Beach with a beer, read my book and go for a few swims, now that the Tongan Major League has finished preparation for the National Team’s 2014 FIFA World Cup Qualifiers at the South Pacific Games in August/September has stepped up. We have been training for three weeks now and the below is an example of a typical day which I will experience 4-5 times per week over the next four months as National Team Coach of Tonga.

The view from 'my spot' at Keleti

6:30am – Wake-up and get ready for the day. I usually wake up naturally at this time now due to the cacophony of farm-yard noises created by various roosters, pigs and dogs outside my window every morning. I have breakfast and a bucket shower - our indoor showers don’t work that well so instead, we fill up a bucket outside and throw it over our heads every morning much to the delight of our neighbours.

6:55am – After a five minute bike ride I arrive at the national gym to meet our Strength Coach ahead of the morning’s session.

7:00am – Group one arrives at the gym and warm-up (we currently have a squad of 32 players so divide the team into two groups for the hour long gym sessions). We dedicate two gym sessions per week to building strength and one/two sessions to core strength and agility.

9:15am – Group two finish their gym session and are transported back home in the Tonga Football Association (TFA) bus.

9:30am – After chatting with our Strength Coach and reviewing the morning’s session I usually spend 30-45 minutes in the gym doing/pretending to do my own work.

10:00am – It’s either off to Friends Café for Bombay Eggs or to Café Escape for breakfast and the luxury of air-conditioning. I use the internet here to respond to/delete the various banter emails I get from home (which can total 70+ in a day) and check the latest football news.

11:30am – Arrive at work after a 30 minute (11km) bike ride from Nuku ‘Alofa to the TFA. If it is raining or has just rained, this journey is a pain in the arse as I don’t have a mud guard on my one-gear bike and my back can be covered in mud (as it was this morning) when I arrive at work. While there are supposed to be 15 full-time workers at TFA I usually arrive to a near deserted office. Tongans are clearly not fans of work in general and we are lucky if the majority of employees turn up for more than an hour or two of work each day.

1:00pm – After a couple of hours mucking about on Facebook, email, Skype and SMH.com.au, I map out the coming week’s training sessions.

2:00pm – Sit down with my support coaches (I currently have three Tongan Assistants, including my “boss”, a Fijian Assistant, an American Strength Coach and a Swedish Physio…. Unfortunately the Swedish Physio is not a female) and explain the afternoon’s training session, their roles and the drills we will be running.

This can take some time as even if Tongans don’t understand something they will say they do anyway. It can usually take a verbal explanation accompanied with diagrams and giving a physical example out on the pitch for my Assistants to understand these drills. It does feel good however that the guys are learning and that I am building their capacity to run future training sessions by themselves. I would love to get to a point here in Tonga where I can allocate the training drills to different coaches and then ‘manage’ the session and only step in at key points… I doubt this can or will happen though.

2:45pm – Head outside into the consistently humid 25-30 degree heat to set-up the fields. I quite like this part of the day as it’s quiet and our fields are surrounded by palm trees so I find it relaxing to be wandering about my ‘office’ and when I compare my office to that of most of my friends and family back home, I realise, that for the next four-five months I am very lucky to be working in this environment.

The Office

3:15pm – Try and have a late lunch, chill out and muck about on the internet before training starts.

4:00pm – All the boys should have arrived if they have slight injuries now is the time to speak to our Swedish physio. It is much to the disappointment of the boys as well that the physio is not a Swedish female. This opinion was formed after our physio’s girlfriends, also Swedish, turned up at training last week.

4:15pm – Head out to the training fields, make sure all the boys have arrived and begin training. Training here is slightly different to anything that I have experience in the past as:

• Before and after each training session it is customary to pray.

• The boys, even the most experienced players, have never really been trained properly and each drill we do, even the most basic, is new to them. So it takes time to explain and give demonstrations of each drill and requires a bit of patience to wait for the boys to understand exactly what they should be doing before correcting technical aspects of their play.

• I don’t speak fluent Tongan but try to speak as much of it as possible. I feel I have learned the important words so far – leilei Oma (lay-lay oma) = sprint; ngaue malohi (na-u-he ma-lo-he) = work hard; fakacau’cau’ (Fa-ka-Cow-Cow – my favourite) = think; faka piko’piko (as spelt and another favourite) = lazy. I have learnt more football-specific words but those, especially the last two are my favourites.

6:15pm – As it does take a little bit of time to explain each drill and wait for translations we normally finish after close to 120 minutes. Being honest, the boys are technically not great but you would come to expect that from a bunch of amateurs who have never been trained before. However, they work incredibly hard, have a great team spirit and, most importantly, are doing their best.

6:30pm - After letting the boys cool down I usually summarise the training back in the office and take note of who has performed well and who has not. It is then my job to drive half the team back home. My job description really should be – National Team Coach/Bus Driver. Most of the boys don’t work let alone own cars so after making their way to training through a combination of running, hitch-hiking or jumping on one of the infrequent public buses, I make sure they get home as quickly as possible.

7:30-8:30pm-ish – Tonga is bigger than I expected. It takes ages to drop everyone home and I only cover half the island, my Fijian Assistant takes the boys who live out east back home and I cover the west and central parts of the island. I get home and if it’s Thursday or a Friday it is time for a beer or two and dinner in Nuku ‘Alofa and potentially some grinding at The Billfish, if not then hopefully one of my housemates has cooked dinner!

The Billy

As you can see days can be quite long; however this is balanced by the one or two days each week where we only have the afternoon session or the boys play an inter-team trial in the afternoon. On these days I generally sit at Keleti Beach with a beer, some of the freshest fish ‘n’ chips for lunch, snooze in the sun, read my book and swim in the balmy South Pacific until it is time to get back on the bike for a five minute ride back to work for training.

Not a bad way to spend a year!!

Keleti Beach

N.B. - Its Friday here which invariably means the internet is rubbish so I have only been able to upload two photos. I will try and upload more as the afternoon goes on.