Interview with England's New Head Coach
Today we offer you an interview with Mr Paul Whelan, the new Head Coach of the England Futnet Association, in which he speaks about the plans and activities to promote and develop this sport in England, especially in view of this year's World Championships.
Mr Paul Whelan has been appointed the new Head Coach of the England Futnet Association (EFNA) following his excellent displays in the UK based tournaments where he has been undefeated. He will be taking over from Joe Monks who is stepping aside from the managerial role to focus on other aspects of futnet. Paul’s first steps as head coach are to train and pick the side for the Under 21 World Championships in Brno, Czech Republic this November. Following this he will be taking the fledgling side to the World Championships in Nymburk where he hopes England will improve on their showing from last year’s European Championships in Corsica.
We conducted an interview with him earlier this week where we discussed England Futnet’s aims:
Q. What do you see your role doing for the development of EFNA?
A. There are two key aspects to the role, the first is training the squad to hone our skills and the second is to raise awareness of the sport to encourage more people to get involved. We are very grateful to Mr Jarek Dylag who is the Head of EFNA as he has put a lot of work in place to enable us to get to this position. I am looking forward to working closely with him to fulfil our aims.
Q. How do you plan on raising awareness of futnet?
A. As everyone in the squad is young, we aim to go into local schools and sports club to do demonstrations, we are very grateful to St Benedict’s in Ealing for allowing us to use their sports hall as without them we would have no base to train. The Head of EFNA is putting a lot of effort in to raise awareness in the Midlands whilst I am focusing my aims in the South, together we are increasing the sports reputation well.
Q. How do you plan to develop the current players involved in futnet in England?
A. There is a very friendly environment within the sport and all the other national team coaches have offered plenty of advice, we are trying to develop our game using the same training techniques that the Czech’s and Slovakians have used in order to compete at that top level. Working with more experienced coaches, watching and analysing video footage will all be vital for our improvement.
Q. The next major tournament for England is the Under 21 World Championships in November. What do you plan to do between now and then to give you a chance to perform better than you did in Corsica?
A. Our main problem in Corsica was a lack of a point-winning shot, our defensive play and ball control is very good but in order to convert that into winning games we need to develop a smash or particular way of winning points. Match experience is obviously very important because it is a very different environment to training so we hope to play in some matches against the home nations and compete in the Northern Ireland league when it restarts. In addition to this we will host a London Summer League which has 6 teams entered at present.
Q. Now you have taken control of squad selection will there be any difference in players selected compared with previous tournaments?
A. Since Corsica the number of players involved in the sport in England has increased greatly, we are always encouraging new players to join in with EFNA tournaments. Players will be selected for the national team based on the merit of their performances in these tournaments. We have a couple of new young players who already have experience in the Home Nations Tournament and we hope to continue their progress over the coming months.