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Seven jobs you can hand to your AI assistant coach. And three you never should.
Every coaching week has seven jobs in it that are not coaching. Here is how they usually go, and where an assistant takes them off you.
Sunday, 21:40. Four photos from yesterday's match are on your phone, one note that says "9m, too slow", and a group chat where two players have written that they cannot make Tuesday.
Tuesday is still a blank page. You will fill it from memory, the way you always have. Memory keeps the loud things: the two breakaways you conceded, the argument on the bench.
Your left back has not had one minute of focused work since October. He is not in that memory, because nothing about him was loud.
Every coaching week has seven jobs in it that are not coaching. Collecting, sorting, writing down, reminding. You do all seven already, in a notebook, in a spreadsheet, or in your head.
This is what each one looks like when it is done by hand, where it breaks, and what changes when an assistant takes it over.
Worth saying up front. You can run all seven of these with a notebook and a spreadsheet. Some coaches do it well for a whole season. It usually breaks in the same place: keeping the record costs more than the week gives back, so somewhere around October the entries stop.
The seven
1. Getting the season into one place
The job. Squad, birth years, positions, fixtures and your own drills, in one place you can open on a Tuesday afternoon.
How it usually goes. The squad is in a spreadsheet, the fixtures are in the club system, the drills are in a notebook and in your head. Nothing is wrong with any of it until you need two of them at once.
How we do it. You upload the spreadsheet you already keep and Coach Lucas matches the columns himself.
2. The picture before the match
The job. Walking into the hall on Saturday with the same read of the opponent and of your own week that you had on Wednesday.
How it usually goes. You carry it in your head. At 19:50, with the hall filling up, you remember about two thirds of it, and the third you lose is rarely the unimportant one.
How we do it. You fill in the pre-match stage and a short brief comes back, three to five lines, built from what you put in and from what your players reported that week.
3. Catching the match while it is still fresh
The job. The sharpest things you notice happen between 20:40 and 21:10. Getting them out of your head before Tuesday.
How it usually goes. You tell yourself you will remember. On Tuesday you have the feeling but not the detail, and a feeling is not coaching input.
How we do it. You fill in the post game stage that same evening and a written brief comes back, ready to be read on Monday.
4. Hearing the players who never speak up
The job. Knowing how the group is actually doing, not how the three loudest players say it is doing.
How it usually goes. You ask in the hall and get "fine". The fourteen year old who is struggling is not going to say it in front of eleven team mates.
How we do it. Players answer five short questions before a match and four after it. Once ten of them have answered, Lucas writes a brief from those answers. Quiet players answer honestly on a phone.
5. Building next week
The job. Turning what the match told you into two sessions that are not a repeat of last week.
How it usually goes. Sunday evening, blank page. What ends up in the session is a mix of what you remember and what you are most comfortable coaching, which is how a group slowly drifts towards your favourite drills.
How we do it. Ask for one to four weeks and a draft comes back in a few minutes, built from a method written by an EHF Master Coach and from what your team has actually been doing. You move blocks, cut blocks, keep what fits. You are judging a plan instead of inventing one.
6. Noticing drift before it becomes a problem
The job. Spotting the player whose effort is falling, who has missed three sessions, or who reports soreness every time there are two days between matches.
How it usually goes. You notice when he is already gone, or already injured.
How we do it. After a few weeks of data, Lucas flags it. He does not decide anything. He gets your attention onto that player about a week earlier, which is usually the whole difference.
7. Speaking every player's language
The job. Making sure the two boys who joined from abroad understand more than half of what is said.
How it usually goes. They nod. You find out in March what they did not understand in October.
How we do it. The app runs in eleven languages and every player uses it in his own, so their answers come back honest instead of polite.
The three you never hand over
Every coach asks the same question here: where does this stop?
Who plays. Selection carries everything a system cannot see: what a player has been through this month, what the group needs from that choice, what you are willing to live with on Saturday.
What the team stands for. Your standards, how people speak to each other, what is not negotiable in your hall.
The conversation after a bad night. A sixteen year old who has just lost his place in the rotation needs a coach in the room, not a notification.
You are not handing over the coaching. You are handing over the blank page.
What actually changes by week six
Week one
You upload the squad, fill in a stage, invite the players. Short briefs come back and a draft arrives that you edit. It feels like a tidy week and nothing more than that.
Week six
Monday has something on it you would have lost by Wednesday. The draft arrives with your team already in it. You can see which player has gone quiet, which group has had no focused work since October, and what your last four matches keep telling you.
This is the part that is hard to sell and easy to feel. Nothing in week one is dramatic. By week six you are no longer remembering your season, you are reading it.
Your first ten minutes
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Your next match is the cheapest place to test this. Add it, fill in the pre-match stage, and read what comes back.