England Women’s legend Marieanne Spacey and current Women’s goalkeeping coach Keith Rees recently lent their expertise to aspiring coaches in Papua New Guinea.

As part of The FA’s ongoing Memorandum of Understanding with the Oceania Football Confederation, Spacey and Rees each delivered theoretical and practical sessions to help improve their hosts’ knowledge and understanding of working with players of all abilities.

The five-day trip was held at the headquarters of the Papua New Guinea FA in Lae and The FA’s travelling duo decided to base their sessions around Long Term Player Development, goalkeeping, the practice spectrum, session planning and how to create an environment to help players learn.

Speaking to the coaches afterwards, they revealed the key messages they extracted from the sessions. They were:

• A greater understanding of technical goalkeeping sessions and more confidence to deliver them
• A greater understanding of the practice spectrum and when and why you deliver constant, variable and random sessions
• How players learn and develop, technically, physically, socially and psychologically at different times and how, as coaches, they can support this development.

Spacey said of her trip: “It was a fantastic learning experience for us as FA Staff and tutors to gain an understanding of where the Papua New Guinea FA are in terms of their Football Development.

“Hopefully we have given the coaches some tools to take out into their respective areas and use to develop not just the players but the whole game in Papua New Guinea.”