Introduction [00:00:03] This is a Sport Australia podcast production.

Cam Tradell [00:00:08] Hello and welcome to our coaching and officiating podcast series. My name is Cam Tradell and I'm the project lead for coaching and officiating at Sport Australia. Over this series, we will look at what it takes to modernise Australia's coaching and officiating system. Each podcast, we will be joined by a special guest who will share experiences and practical tips on their topics. We're lucky enough to have Professor Rochelle Eime on the phone today, Professor Rochelle Eime is the director of Sport and Recreation spatial, which focuses on investigating sport and recreation participation facilities and health for evidence-based decision making. She has strong industry networks within the sport and health sector, including state and national government agencies, as well as sport and recreation organisations. Rochelle has written over 300 peer review publications, book chapters and industry reports and research, and has won a number of state and national research accolades. On top of that, Rochelle has been involved with club based sport throughout her entire life as a player, coach, volunteer and now parent of players and is a board member of Vic Sport. Welcome, Rochelle, thanks very, very much for joining us.

Rochelle Eime [00:01:21] Thanks very much it's great to be here.

Cam Tradell [00:01:21] Rochelle, you've done a lot of research in your role and you've got some fantastic insight to our current volunteers of coaches and officials. And I was wondering, do you have any thoughts on, you know, throughout the last 10 years, the last decade or so, how has coaching and officiating changed in the landscape of sport?

Rochelle Eime [00:01:42] Yeah, I think one of the biggest things with coaching is the qualification of the coaches and the quality of the coaching. So we don't always see that the grassroots that the coaches necessarily have coaching qualifications or updated skill sets that might still be in the mindset of when they played footy or netball or tennis and deliver the sport the way it was delivered for them. And we need to make sure that it's quality coaching that looks at improving their skills. It's about inclusion of all participants, but also it's about improving the skills for everyone, not just those to the best on the ground. And it's about also to the the players having fun and enjoyment. It's not all about winning medals and trophies. And we need to try and change that mindset a bit to.

Cam Tradell [00:02:29] That's great. You talk about accreditation. You sort of are you leaning more towards competence of the people because so many bespoke or different sorts of environments that coaches and officials delve in these days. And it's no longer just a one size cookie cutter fits all approach.

Rochelle Eime [00:02:48] Absolutely. It's not about the certificate in the frame or it's in the drawer. It's about being competent to be able to improve the physical literacy of the children. So that's not just their skill set. It's about making sure the children or adults or adolescents have the competence to be out to play and be active throughout life. It's not just about the skills for that particular sport. It's more broader than the physical literacy.

Cam Tradell [00:03:11] With regards to physical literacy, one or two of those domains of the physical literacy may actually be more important to some groups than others. And I guess that becomes a real driver. And being able to understand that and having an understanding as a coach, what's required in front of you becomes crucial.

Rochelle Eime [00:03:29] Absolutely, because the motivations of why people play are really quite different. The motivation has changed throughout the lifespan, but they also change according to the drivers of the players themselves. You've got those that are driven to exceed in those sports and that those are others that just want to play with their mates or have fun. You know, the main motivations for the adults to play sport is fun and enjoyment and social reasons. And then the physical health and fitness and then performance and competition for adolescents. Again, it's fun and enjoyment, physical health and fitness, but playing with their friends. So it's all about being with others and enjoying that connection with others, it's not about winning and it really makes no one goes out there to lose, everyone enjoys winning, but it's not the main motivator, because if it was, more than 50 percent of people are really disappointed every time they go out to play because only half the people win. So it can't be the main motivator and it's not. But we see a lot of coaches, a lot of club officials and presidents always focus on the men's A grade side, winning or winning the premiership or best on grounds. So how many flags and trophies they have in the club. But that's not a main motivator for why people drive to play sport. And it's not a main motivator why people continue to play sport. And we see a massive drop out across the board in in a club-based sport.

Cam Tradell [00:04:47] Yeah, that's interesting. Fifty percent success I would have been happy with when I was playing. To be honest with you Rochelle,I tend to be on the low side of that. But maybe that says a little bit more about me. With that in mind, with regards to how we grow a vibrant support base, do you feel like Australia's still a volunteering nation? What have you seen with the trends and the research and the data

Rochelle Eime [00:05:10] Club based sport in Australia is a volunteer sector and in an industry unlike some other sort of countries overseas and to the nature of club based sport in Australia is it's generally an individual sport within an individual club. Now you might have footy and netball, but they are still to seperate sports. You don't have the the multi sports sectors that you might see over in Europe where kids can sort of easily transition around into different sports within that one sort of system and sector. The volunteers in sport are generally players, past players or parents of players. And so the trouble is you have quite a big churn rate with those volunteers and especially in the junior clubs. As soon as those juniors aren't playing anymore, those adults aren't going to continue necessarily to volunteer that club. They're going to follow where their children go to school or drop out of volunteering as their children move on. And I'm concerned that due to COVID that there's that loss of transition. So often you have the people that are volunteering the club, their children might be at the older age, so they've been around the club for quite a few years, sort of know what's going on. And they often have that transitional year of sort of being mentored into future roles such as president or secretary or coach, et cetera. And last year, especially in Victoria, when that was lost, I'm concerned that there's that loss of transition of skill set, because often there's not a lot of support in these volunteer roles. And I think that that's going to be a big concern for clubs, especially, too, with an extra layer of bureaucracy and guidelines due to covid. Some and a lot of sports are concerned, not necessarily just retention of players, but retention of volunteers, because without the volunteers, there is no game day.

Cam Tradell [00:07:01] That's really interesting and doesn't really lend itself to to what you were just talking about with regards to parents who are in coaching or officiating for their kids, actually just following their pathway and making sure knowing that their main motivator is fun, it sort of seems to take them out of their environment if they're going up the linear scale of accreditation.

Rochelle Eime [00:07:23] And what we say with the with the linear scale is the issue that the better coaches sort of tend to coach the better kids in that model. I know with my boys footy club that they're involved with that's just starting up again this season. They're struggling to find coaches for the ressies for the for the reserves teams. Now they're the ones that probably need the best coaches to actually improve the skills of those players. So we sort of have this mindset that the better the players, the better the coaches or the coaches want to coach, the better players. But we need the better coaches down at the grassroots, at the entry level, the ones that can really help those those children develop those skills and that competency and confidence. I know actually coaching younger children is actually a lot more difficult to do. And you need really good coaches at that level. And that and that age.

Cam Tradell [00:08:17] A hundred percent I couldn't agree more. The support of that area there is is really lacking. And the ability, the role that people can play, like the parents who are good enough to stick their hand in the air and come and coach at that level the impact that they can make with a little bit of help and mentoring from people who are, as you say, identified as good coaches, can make a massive difference with regards to intrinsically motivating people to remain in sport.

Rochelle Eime [00:08:43] And I don't think that's where clubs necessarily connect the skill sets of their club community with the actual roles. For example, you know, I was a level two tennis coach coached for many years when my children were starting playing football in sort of under 10s, there are about eight, you know, I can kick footy and handball well enough for under 10s footy. I put my hand up several times to help out with training when they asked for people to help out at training. By the third time I'd done that, I wasn't asked to step out on the ground, it was only the dads that were asked to step on the ground. So there was four blokes standing there, there was two lines and one footy and about 40 footies sitting on the ground and the kids barely touched the ball. It was really poorly run. So I think it's about seeing through those biases, and it's not just gender, it could be age, it could be people from outside of sport that could actually be really good in certain roles within another sport. I think we need to match the skill set of the people rather than just this mindset that the best player of the sport is the best one to run the sport.

Cam Tradell [00:09:45] Again, I agree. I think that's really, really important. What would be some of the ways that you feel like we could re-engage or get individuals coming back to sport?

Rochelle Eime [00:09:55] I think it's that I think it's about trying to articulate what the value proposition rather than just sort of seeing as an extra chore or an extra burden that people have to do. You know, there's some great things that people can learn and develop through, through volunteer roles and leadership roles within clubs. And I think we need to highlight what those, those aspects are. And especially for youth. I think we need to get more the youth involved instead of the ' pale, male, and stale' running every decision and and everything in sport. I mean, half of all sports participants are aged between five and 15. So we need more them in decision making. And why can't we have more formal leadership and mentoring of those youth into taking on some of these roles, they see the value in what they're gaining in their skill sets is going to help them out in their career as well.

Cam Tradell [00:10:42] That's fantastic. I think there's some parallels that can really be drawn. What would you say needs to happen next? How do we sort of get to that point that people want to get back to their club? What do you think is going to help us kick start that next?

Rochelle Eime [00:10:54] I think it's about trying to highlight the good of sport, so highlighting the good things we always see in the media, all the negative things with sport. And it's often at the elite end. Why can't we highlight the good things I was presenting to sports this week and state Government and Vic Health, and we're seeing some really good five year trends of female participation. Now, we don't see change overnight, but change can occur and it does occur, but it takes five years. So I think if we can highlight what is good about sport, it's about the physical, the mental, the social health and wellbeing. It's about connecting individuals, families and communities. It's about learning in leadership roles, whether it's coach or other volunteer roles. And I don't think we we highlight the good things about sport. I think it's often about winning or, or centralising good players. We should be centralising the volunteers, the people who've made the sport happen. I think we pick on people, you know, the the bad behaviour we often see towards towards umpires and the yelling, you know, why can't we all just be nice.

Cam Tradell [00:12:03] Exactly. Create these positive experiences. That would be a utopia. That that'd be fantastic

Rochelle Eime [00:12:08] Yeah, if we put enjoyment central to everything. And if we make it about being fun and people having fun and connecting with others in a fun environment, I think we can do so much and that that fun environment doesn't might look different for those with lower skills and those for high skills, and those are really like a real formal competitive model than those that don't. But it's still about enjoyment because that's what people are there for.

Cam Tradell [00:12:32] It's the major motivator for everyone. And there's some flawed thinking around the fact that enjoyment isn't the main motivator for people in high performance. It needs to be the main motivator for people in high performance.

Rochelle Eime [00:12:43] If they don't enjoy it, it's it's it's it's really tough.

Cam Tradell [00:12:46] I'm going to throw a blue sky question to you. Have you got a view on what's the utopia? What's the sporting environment? What do you see as being something that we can all strive for, a really solid stretch target for us to what the environment of sport looks like in this country?

Rochelle Eime [00:13:02] I think it's about being an inclusive, inclusive environment. So that can make a lot of things, but it's about being inclusive of diversity, of skill and of ability and race and of age and but but also to inclusive decision making. So, you know, the board and the committee, we can't have sport run the way it's always been run. We need to have fresh eyes. You know the way,  We need to think about the way sport is delivered. And we have modified sport, which is "fun, friends and fitness and skill development", which is great. And then we have that transition to club competition. Now, that's great, too, but only for those that are really good at the sport and really love that competitive model. I think we need to open our eyes up into more the organised but not so focussed on competitiveness, so the social rec programs, because there's a lot of people that want to play sport but but aren't good enough to play in the competitions or don't want to be in that space.

Cam Tradell [00:14:06] Rochelle, thank you very, very much for joining us today. This has been fantastic, really insightful. And I wanted to thank you for your time.

Rochelle Eime [00:14:14] No worries, thanks very much.

Cam Tradell [00:14:18] Thank you for joining me today, if you'd like to find out more about coaching and officiating or have any feedback or questions, please email us at workforce@sportaus.gov.au. My name is Cam Tradell and I look forward to you joining me for the next podcast in the coaching and officiating series.