How do I manage coach development plans in Clubhouse?

Coach development is one of the most heavily weighted areas in the FNSW Club Standards framework — worth up to 48 points across Coach Development Plan and Professional Development. Clubhouse helps you create, track, and evidence your club's coach development program.

Full walkthrough: Run coach development plans in the guide covers the season's three conversations step by step.

The Club Standards assess two aspects of coach development:

Coach Development Plan (up to 24 points, weight 3):

• Coach induction at the start of the season covering the Youth Development Plan, Football Operations, and Player Services
• Contracts and position descriptions for every coach
• Individual Development Plans (IDPs) for each coach with SMART goals
• Regular formal feedback and appraisals aligned with player feedback dates
• Evidence of internal mentoring, model sessions, or external education

Professional Development (up to 24 points, weight 3):

• Funding and support for coaches to attend FA Diploma courses, FNSW CPD workshops, Coaching Conferences, and other education opportunities
• Evidence of attendance and investment

Each coach's plan is three conversations a season: a Pre-season plan, a Mid-season review and an End-of-season review, dated from your Season Plan. In each one the coach prepares, you complete it, and they agree.

1. Go to the relevant program (e.g. MJDL or BYL) from the home dashboard.
2. Tap Coaches in the sidebar. The band at the top starts the season's plans for every coach, then follows the conversation in progress, and the Development plan column shows whose move it is for each coach.
3. Tap a coach's chip to open their Development Plan tab, where you comment, set goals and support, write each review's outcome and complete the conversation.

The coach rates themselves, writes a reflection before each review, adds progress to goals and agrees to each completed conversation from My development on their phone. Clubhouse reminds coaches when a conversation opens, before it closes and when they haven't agreed, and tells you when conversations waiting on you are about to close. Your Feedback log on the plan is private unless you share a note.

The scorecard reads the plan live: how many of the programme's coaches have one, whether the pre-season plan is completed, and whether a review has been. It also counts a Coach Induction event in the club calendar as the season's induction. Completed courses sit on the separate Qualifications tab.

FNSW recommends that coach IDPs:

• Use SMART goals — Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound
• Are age-appropriate — aligned with the age group the coach is working with
• Include collaborative input from the TD or Head of Program, not just top-down targets
• Incorporate coach self-reflection as a regular practice
• Connect to the club's Coaching Methodology and Youth Development Plan

As TD, your role during training sessions and match days is to observe, support, and develop your coaching staff — not to coach individual teams. FNSW Technical Advisors will assess how you:

• Provide support to coaches before and after sessions
• Ask insightful questions and give meaningful guidance
• Observe sessions and provide formal and informal feedback
• Implement the Coach Development Plan consistently
• Demonstrate high football knowledge shared in a positive learning environment

The Coach Notes panel on a match is shared by the programme's coaching staff, so you can read the coaches' notes and add your own, each under the author's name. What a coach chose to write down mid-match is evidence for your next conversation.

FNSW and Football Australia offer a range of development opportunities for coaches. Clubs are encouraged to fund and support attendance:

• FA Coaching Diplomas — A, B, C levels
• FNSW Coach Education CPD Expos
• State Coaching Conference
• FNSW-delivered workshops (CPD hours attached)
• FA Online workshops (CPD hours attached)
• JDL Development Conference — staff attendance is scored in the Club Standards (scored 0–3 based on number of staff attending)

The Qualifications tab on a coach's profile records licences and diplomas (with certificate number, issue and expiry dates, and optionally the certificate itself), not event attendance, so keep your own register of who attended what. Its What FNSW requires tile shows the minimum licence for each role in your league and ticks the roles the coach's licences already cover, which makes it a quick way to see which course to fund next.