At the end of March we once again visited Meadow Lane for our latest CPD event in partnership with Notts County academy, this time all about psychology.

The welcome from Academy Manager, Jon Goodman was as warm as ever and the 30 coaches who managed to fight through the awful rush hour traffic looked keen to get started.

Claire Davidson delivered the workshop, who began by explaining her position as psychologist for the first team, through to the academy. Claire arrived at Meadow Lane after performing a similar role with MK Dons, and also worked with the British Olympic Skeleton Team (that sport where athletes hurtled down an iced run at ridiculous speeds on what has been described as a meat tray!) in the 2014 Olympics in Sochi.

If the audience thought that they were simply going to sit and listen, it quickly became obvious that this wasn’t going to be the case, as Claire quickly had them on their feet, taking part in an activity which helped the coaches discover 'Who They Were'. A series of questions were posed by Claire and Jon, which after a while showed the coaches if they were a 'Red, Green, Blue or Yellow person'.

As expected there were lots of great questions for Claire and Jon from the audience; some great advice was given out which would help coaches become better at what they do, and in turn help their players.

It was nearly 10pm when we finally had to draw a close to the evening, as we’d have been there until midnight if we hadn’t! Claire and Jon still gave their time to answer individual’s questions until we had to close up and head home.

We had some fantastic feedback from the audience, and had a request for their services at a future FA event in the summer after word got out.

We’d like to publically send our thanks to Jon and Claire for another fantastic evening at Notts County, and to the coaches who helped make the evening a real success.

As we draw towards the end of the season, we still have CPD opportunities available for coaches. You can see the events we have planned and book on here.