Understanding the pedagogic underpinning and knowledge sources of game form coaching in high-level team sport coaches

Figures & data

Table 1 Participants

	Sport	Sex	Level of athlete coached (based on Swann et al., (2016)	Years of experience
Lucy	Soccer	Female	Talent Development	18
Ben	Soccer	Male	Top tier professional league	24
Scott	Rugby	Male	Top tier professional league	10
John	Gaelic Football	Male	Top tier league^1	20
Colin	Hockey	Male	International Olympic level	26
Tom	Rugby Union	Male	Top tier professional league	20
Brendan	Gaelic Football	Male	Top tier league	31
James	Hockey	Male	International Olympic level	11
Steven	Soccer	Male	Talent Development	14
Stuart	Rugby Union	Male	Talent Development	14
Peter	Hockey	Male	High performance	21
Callum	Soccer	Male	Talent Development	16
Donal	Hurling	Male	Top tier league	17
Zara	Netball	Female	International level	20
Martin	Hurling	Male	Top tier league	16
Sophie	Netball	Female	International level	10
Susan	Netball	Female	International level	11

Table 2 Interview Questions

Question	Probes
To begin, I would like to know more about you and your work in coaching.	Give me a brief run through your career, with an emphasis on your coaching roles
How often do you use games in your typical training week?	What does your typical training week look like? Does this change depending on phase of season? Typically, how much of your training time is taken up in game form training? Why is this amount of training time given to game form activities?
Why do you use game form activities in training?	Are there any specific reasons you use games? What decides the selection of game-based practices?
Outside of training, what methods do you use to prepare players for game-based practice?	Discussion of individual player roles/tasks/needs? Prebrief the session? Debrief the session?
What are the typical outcomes for players when using game form training?	How do games benefit players? Are there disadvantages to games based training? How do you know this? How do you measure this? How do you maximise/mitigate these?
What is the role of the coach in games?	What is your role when game form training is taking place? What are your reflections on coaching/providing feedback vs using the game? Do you stop the game to give instructions or ask questions?
I’d like you to think of a game that you have recently used in training. How did you choose or design it? (Specific)	What were your reasons for playing the game? Theoretical underpinning? Trial and error? Seen someone else use it? Planned as part of a block of training? Do you use the same game across multiple sessions? What was the game built upon?
What was your criteria for success when using this game? (Specific)	How the players coped with the demands or can it be deemed a good game even if the players struggle somewhat with it? Is this normal? Have there been any occasions when you have looked for different outcomes?
Where have you found out about the use of games?	Where did you learn about using games in training? Do you do it how you were taught it, or ‘by the book’? Do you mix approaches?

Table 3 Theories Informing Practice

Theme	Sub-Theme	Raw data exemplar
Learning Design	Constrain to afford	Yeah, so we would use constraints where necessary…for example, I wouldn’t say “you can’t play backwards”, because I think sometimes that takes the realism out of the game, it forces unnatural habits…. We might put constraints or restrictions, we might put rewards on that as well. So every time I receive and play forwards, I’ll get a point whatever it might be. (Callum)
	Perception- Action Coupling	If you define skill as both the binding of perception with action, so what you’re perceiving and your ability to execute on what you’re perceiving with action and for me, then the principle of specificity, so it’s got to replicate the demands of the game. (Colin)
	Fidelity and representative design	For me the best design of sessions are if your session can coach any topic or any player any particular skill (A) it’s realistic to the game (B) it’s got context and (C) it’s challenging. So that’s how I kind of judge success of a game as well is actually Can you and could you coach anything within that as well? If you can’t, it might not be realistic. (Callum)
	Layering of complexity	I’ll try and connect the warm up with the fact that we’re wanting everybody to defend. So like, the warm up game would generally be something to do with having to turn the ball over and score from it and in the session, as well, the technical skill part of the session will also be to do with their body position and that’s where it’ll be broken down a little bit, probably a little bit less games, but then the games probably would be reintroduced once we’ve gone through some of the technical skill. (Susan)
Coaching Styles	Appropriate feedback	I try not to do that (pull players out for feedback) because they want to play football and if you pull a player out of a game, I mean… I don’t do a lot, I’ll only do that if I feel it’s burning, like I really need to tell you something, because you’re not understanding it. Like, if I’ve tried to call it out a couple of times, like as they’re playing, but you know, this needs to be addressed now. (Lucy)
	Questioning	You can’t become a problem solver by just being told what to do all the time, so I’d ask a couple of questions. If we’re not getting there well then I probably haven’t asked the right questions. (Brendan)
	Explicit Instruction	Like we’re going to be on the pitch for 77 minutes, they’re going to do 41 minutes of work. So stopping a session or even in the break, to ask a question and develop an open conversation that like is just, it’s just not happening. Those conversations need to happen before the session or after the session or in a meeting or at lunch when you’re chatting or whatever. So a lot of the time it will be an instruction. (Tom)
Desiredplayer experience	Shared mental models	At least feeling a bit more confident about what’s the idea of these kinds of let me say “connected play”? How can we attack together? How can we defend together? How can we manage certain situations within these games, so that they are more, they are not always on one page but that their expectations and awareness become more aligned. (Peter)
	Cognitive load	If you’re just going into the gym to strength test, just literally turn up and zombie your way through it and just push out as big numbers as you can. And there’s, there’s no cognitive load with that. So actually, you know, is this a week where we can get them thinking lots on court, because we’re going to be working physically hard in the gym. And so, the cognitive load can be high on court, but we don’t need it to be super intense and always on the go. Or is it a week where we just want to, you know, you know, deload them cognitively or whatever. But trying to really think about that a little bit more, because I think previously we didn’t so much. (Sophie)
	Challenge point	I think errors are crucial. Like, if errors aren’t happening and an exercise is working too well in training then the exercise isn’t appropriate for the group, it’s too easy… I think errors have to be happening because they’re just so valuable. (Martin)

Table 4 Knowledge Sources

Theme	Sub-theme	Raw Data Exemplar	Number of coaches identifying as an impactful knowledge source
Unmediated sources	Observing other coaches	I spent a lot of time observing really, coaching schools’ day to day where I’d coach but then I’ll be as an observer on the academy and watching what the kids responded really well to and what the kids do. (Ben)	14
	Social media	I’m always looking at, yes, I’m always looking online. For other sports from warm up drills to skills drills, that kind of stuff. Little snippets. [Sport] for [skill], anything that can give me an edge, I’ll always chase down and I’m always seeking to learn. (John)	9
Internal sources	Reflection on personal practice	I remember my first coaching job at (Football club’s) community department doing after-school clubs. Before I did an after-school club, they put me in a camp and I’d never worked with kids before and I’ve never coached. And then I had to. So basically my first experience of coaching was taking 15 kids on holiday camp for like five hours a day. So I was just like, “Oh, my God, what the hell do I do with these children?” And I remember learning in like, day one, that kids love games. So… all I was thinking, how am I going to entertain these kids, I used to come up with these games. (Lucy)	10
Mediated sources	Mediated coach education programmes	It has but probably not in a traditional sense, you know? … The B license and the A license generally pushed phases of play… I suppose the game to a degree, but in a very directive and specific manner, it wasn’t free play in the games that we’re kind of discussing at the minute or it wasn’t the sort of ebb and flow if you want, it was probably more directive to “you are trying to get this outcome explicitly”. (Steven)	8
	Academic qualification	I’ve done my masters in sports psychology that’s helped with my coaching and my coach education, having that kind of background too. (Donal)	6
	Mentoring	It came from a conversation with (coach) and so myself and (coach) would have phone conversations that would go on forever and stuff like that and he just started talking about you know using different balls and then throughout the course of the conversation anyway we came up with the idea… then you just start building on it, you start trying that and see how it goes. (Brendan)	8
	Coach Developer influence	I invited him to come in and observe some of our sessions way back in 2007 and he just observed some of our sessions, and just sort of asked a few questions about, you know, how valid is your environment? And by that he meant, you know, is what the players seeing, feeling, perceiving (is it) replicating (the game)? Ever since then, I’ve had a massive curiosity. (Colin)	6

Data availability statement

Data is not available on request due to participant anonymity concerns.