England Touch - Going Digital

England Touch are modernising their current systems and introducing new methods to support our own Coaching and Refereeing Pathways, along with providing additional value to our members with new CPD opportunities.

We are taking a digital approach, making training more accessible and offering 21st century options. A move to and an increase in our digital learning offer to attract a broader range of people into coaching and refereeing is key. To better support these communities, now is the time to revisit the way we currently work, and to explore the way in which learning is delivered.

Working from home is now familiar for businesses up and down the country, and it is the perfect opportunity for England Touch to follow suit, especially as we receive plenty of feedback from individuals who would like to attend courses but who cannot for geographical and travel reasons.

Many other national governing bodies are also using this time to move their education and up-skilling online and England Touch can lead the way in our sport by following this best practice.

With examples from other sports and businesses both in the UK and Internationally we must make our education and training delivery more accessible and offer a digital learning alternative. Moving large sections of our training courses online, with interactive delivery, will make formal courses more accessible, more attractive and more participant centred.

The convenience of courses has been a problem in recent times due to geographical spread of presenters coupled with a busy and long domestic season, where our presenters are also heavily involved. Due to the current pandemic crisis, and therefore with no options to do any face to face delivery, we are looking across the board to improve our offerings.

The sport may have stopped for now, but England Touch is still giving players and coaches the opportunity to upskill during the lockdown.

As the governing body for Touch in England, along with the leading European nation, we are often looked upon as a leader in our progressive approaches and we plan to address the immediate need of additional coaches and referees by our latest offerings allowing learners to provide offers in an environment convenient to them.

Coaching courses:

The course content will be the usual Level 1 England Touch Coaching Course. We've already ran one, that received excellent feedback, with plenty more in the pipeline. We use footage of drills and games and have built scenarios to discuss during the course to get good interaction for all participants. We have also offered a reduced the costs of the courses by 50% as a further member benefit.

Referee courses:

We launched our FREE online Foundation course recently.This entry level module is written and owned by England Touch, and is aimed at juniors, new players along with parents and supporters, to help gain knowledge of our sport by learning some of the rules.

This course has been put together in conjunction with Dr Duncan Mascarenhas, Associate Professor of Sport Psychology and Coaching at Edinburgh Napier University, and more details can be seen by CLICKING HERE.

We have also piloted an online Level One Referee course and hope to have further referee courses run online in due course.

Online workouts: 

Each Monday evening at 6pm England Touch’s strength and conditioning coach Aaron Green is running free workouts live on our Facebook page, perfect for your motivation at the start of the week! Each workout will last approx. 45 minutes.

Our Live Facebook sessions will get you ready to get/keep your body in shape for whenever the Touch season resumes! The videos will stay online for you to come back to whenever you like!

Weekend Re-Runs:

Over the last couple of years England Touch has built up a large archive of classic matches and we will are re-living them at 2pm each Saturday and Sunday on our Facebook page.

CPD Workshops:

We are also working hard in the background, to launch a whole range of Continued Professional Development workshops, aimed at players, coaches, referees and administrators alike.

We will cover attacking and defensive trends, developing athletes, creating effective training sessions, decision making, effective talent ID, promoting women in the mixed game, approaching and understanding the new rules and many more.

Social media fun:

We've been keeping things light and fun, with our numerous Spot the Difference images of our England teams and Emoji games featuring our member clubs too..

Coming Soon:

We are finalising details to have more online interaction with our members and supporters. Running weekly Flexibility/Mobility sessions each Wednesday from April 29th, a live Q&A on nutrition for those participating in Touch at all levels and a series of #OneEngland in Focus - A view behind the scenes.