Sunday, December 5, 2010

Northern Rangers appoint Stuart Lomax as their Director of Youth Football


Photo: Stuart Lomax is Northern Rangers' new Director of Youth Football [Photo courtesy of Brendan Lichtendonk]

Stuart Lomax has been appointed to the newly created position of Director of Youth Football by Northern Rangers.

Lomax has had a year off from coaching and returns full of enthusiasm for his new role at the Northern champions.

He has previously coached the Devonport Strikers Northern Premier Women’s League team and, in that role, inflicted a defeat on Launceston City, which was a unique feat in recent seasons.

Rangers have created the new position to better manage the large pool of young talent coming through at the club.

Lomax will be directly responsible for the development and overseeing of the club’s junior team coaches and he will focus on the under-18s, under-16s, under-14s and under-12s.

He will ensure that all these sides play in a similar way to the seniors so that players can readily be promoted to teams above their current age groups. It will prepare the under-18s for ready promotion to the reserves or seniors.

Lomax will also indentify and develop the club’s talented juniors and ensure that they are technically and physically equipped from as young an age as possible.

The position was identified during strategic meetings conducted by the club during the off-season. Member surveys were taken into account and people may still contribute to these surveys by going on to the Rangers website.

Senior manager Adam Whitemore and his assistant Tony Ludby are reported to be excited at the prospect of working closely with Lomax.

The under-18s will be coached by John Crooks and Mel Cuschieri. Crooks took over last season following the untimely passing of Jeff McHugh.

Training for the seniors, reserves and under-18s will commence at 6pm on Monday, 10 January, at the NTCA Ground.

The club’s annual cricket series will take place at the Trevallyn cricket Ground on Monday, 3 January.

Ian Loft is the Rangers’ women’s coach for 2011 and the search is still on for an assistant, and for a Division One coach.

Rangers will hold their AGM at the NTCA Ground at 7.30pm on Thursday, 9 December.

3 comments:

Tommy said...

Credit to Northern Rangers, I've long thought clubs need a long term whole of club strategy for this sort of thing.

Whilst personally I'm against the concept of 'single system' development I do believe strongly in a 'way to play' development, e.g. given this setup, (formation, moment in game - are we defending, are we countering, are we being countered etc), what is my role within the team, what is expected of me at this point.

Teaching players to understand team play, not just have individual technical ability, is vital, and having your younger players ready to fill gaps in more senior sides because they understand these concepts is equally vital.

Well done Rangers.

Anonymous said...

Rangers seem to be doing a lot of good things.

Anonymous said...

Well done to Stuart on your new appointment & congratulations to Rangers in recognising the need to develop the youth to a far greater extent than clubs have been in the past. After all, they are the senior players of the future. I have known Stuart for a few years & I have no doubt he will bring a lot of new ideas to the table in his role.
I agree with Tommy when in saying that youth players should become more tactically aware of what's going on during the game and be able to adapt to opposition teams differing strategies & not be fixed on playing a 'single system' style of football.
This is something that I am attempting to achieve with the Strikers Academy setup and now that the north-west teams will be involved in the new under 14 & 16 boys and under 15 girls club based rosters, it will give the clubs greater control over its future players at an earlier age.
Good luck Stu' in your new role and good luck to all the teams for the 2011 season ahead.
Snow Compagne