Quest to Coach

Hi all,

The third application on my list to review is one that I’ve been dying to review since I purchased it a few months back. I resisted the temptation as the app was just about to undergo a fairly sizeable update which took place early this year and the results were definitely worth waiting for.  For those in the know I am of course talking about i-Drills Soccer

Publicised as a Top 5 sports app in over 16 countries and with current users including coaches based at Liverpool FC, Birmingham City and New York Red Bulls,  i-Drills is a mature coaching application with a strong following of coaches and which boasts an average rating (at time of writing) of 4 stars on the App Store. In truth it’s not hard to see why. The application itself is well presented with plenty of detail on offer within the App Store should you wish to read it and the supporting website is packed full of “how to guides”, drill examples, further resources and news and articles from the coaching world. Clearly the developers of this application are passionate and enthusiastic about coaching as well as their application which makes a pleasant change from other rivals whose sole intent is sales.  Not only do they show an appreciation of the coaching world around them but they appear to engage with their users and take note of feedback provided. The application is constantly under review and information on latest updates is provided to users to see what’s forthcoming and what’s been fixed or tweaked.  I’m not sure whether this is a lessons learned from the large update from version 1.0 to 1.1 (where users lost data if they didn’t update in a certain way) but it shows a willingness to support  their user base and go that extra yard which is refreshing. Bonus points for effort for sure

So, on to the App itself. i-Drills is effectively broken down into the following sections:

•        Create a drill – The drill creator.
•        Drill Library – Database containing all drills stored on your device
•        Session Builder – Compile full sessions including drills from your library with calculations for players and time.
•        Drill Store – Supplement your own drills by purchasing additional drills from the developers themselves.

In my opinion, the drill creator for i-Drills is one of if not the most comprehensive one available currently.  Upon launch you’re presented with a wealth of options for pitch layouts, true there’s no custom option here and bizarrely it’s lacking a basic square shape but to be honest these are the most minor of niggles as what is presented covers just about every other conceivable option.  Once selected you then progress on to creating your drill. Again, a lot of thought has gone into this with lots and lots of options available for equipment, cones, player details and colours and movement lines. Slightly bemusing is the absence of a side on goals icon as you have just about everything else including side on rebounders but I’m sure this will be remedied in future updates.  

What’s also particularly brilliant about i-Drills drill creator is the way that drills are put together in slides. This allows for quick demonstration of progressions and ease of use for presenting and that’s not all. When you create further slides after your initial one you have the option to select “Remember Current Player Positions”, this in effect duplicates the previous slide thus enabling you to quickly build up progressions without having the time-consuming process of re-drawing your entire setup again. Hoorah!

Once you’ve created drills  to your hearts’ content you can access them all in the Drill Library. The Drill Library is pretty self-explanatory it contains all of the drills that you have stored on your device but it does have a few nice extra touches such as allowing different views based on category as well as displaying the information at a glance around slides, duration and number of players (assuming you’ve added this to your own drills of course). The Drill Library also contains links to other areas within the app including the Drill Store. Here you can download a number of free drills to supplement your library and get you started in addition there is the option to buy premium drill content from the developers at a paltry 0.69p which represents good value I think. True there aren’t many available at the moment but I’m sure as the app matures more will become available. 

Another nice feature of i-Drills is the Session Builder, this is a supplementary tool that allows you to quickly and easily add drills to session at the swipe of a finger to create an overall session plan for whatever you’re coaching.

This allows for a quick and easy way when presenting to move between drills and also gives you overall information on number of drills in your session and the total time frame estimated to coach them. Presenting your sessions is easy with printing, email, and mirroring support for Apple TV included as part of the package.

My thoughts on i-Drills are overwhelmingly positive. I honestly think it’s the best all round coaching application available. At £4.99 it’s a little bit more expensive than some of its rivals but then this app is far more than just a whiteboard and I think it represents good value. The option to download further drills at 0.69p per drill is also a nice option and will be even better once the app matures. What might be a good idea would be to allow an import / export of drills in the software so that i-Drill app users could share drills, particularly useful in academies where there are syllabus led drills rather than every coach having to draw each drill within the app but this may come in future functionality. Yes there are some minor niggles also within drill building and I have suffered the occasional crash / blank session bug but then this may be down to the iPad 3 more than anything else.  As an alternative to animation I think the slide system really works and is far easier to use and create progressions on and the whole application is really rather well thought out.

So with that in mind I’d give i-Drills a stonking 4.5 / 5 the best app out there in my opinion and it’s only going to get better.

Check out www.i-drills.com for further info

Until next time

Chris

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Hi everyone,

Hope you enjoyed my first app review, thanks for your comments so far. The second application on my review list is 24/7 Coach Football. 

This app comes endorsed by Paul “Noddy” Holder, the FA’s National development Manager for the 12-16 age group as well as by Nigel Pritchard a fellow coach educator.

Noddy has this to say about the app:

“It’s so easy to use – I’m able to design a practice and then share it with other coaches or players in an amazingly short period of time. I’ve tried many coaching applications in the past, but this is head and shoulders above them all by a long way. It’s a professional tool for my coaching and practice design – it saves me hours every week.”

First impressions of the app are definitely good. The app is quick to load when launched and you’re immediately presented with the session creation loading screen together with useful help icons if you need assistance.  It’s very quick to get started and you really can design sessions in minutes.

The app has a number of features not least of which include:

•          Custom pitch sizes
•          Coaching icon selection
•          Easy to use finger tip driven interface
•          Undo and redo facility
•          Full session editing and duplication
•          Sharing via email, facebook, twitter and printing with airprint enabled printers
•          HDTV / Projector Support

Make no bones about it, this is a good application and is very well presented (you can feel it coming right….) but (there it is!!!) there are a number of areas I feel the app could be improved upon.

Probably the biggest problem for me is the price. At £9.99 this app is one of the most expensive out there and with great prices should come great features. It’s all about expectations for me, if the developers had priced the app lower, say around £3 or £4.99 I wouldn’t be half as critical but because it’s a penny short of a tenner there should be a little more value add.

For example, the session interface is great but rather than have to create the first part of my session then come out and duplicate it as many times as I need progressions this should all be within the one session. I should be able to add pages to my sessions. This also makes presenting them quicker as you don’t have to come out of one session to go into another. This is something other competitors such as iDrills (review coming shortly) do very successfully.

Although the interface is great and there are some nice coaching icons, these are still too few in my opinion. 3 Team colours with optional numbers is great, so is a neutral colour for targets and servers and bold text for GKs  so why restrict us to 1 type of cone and only 1 colour?  No different size goals, no poles, no agility equipment and will someone please create a toggle able snap to grid feature so I can get my line markings and cones in a straight line (at least they’ll be straight on the session plan then if not on the pitch itself :p ).

This may sound harsh but given the price tag I expect a little more from 24/7 than other applications out there. To be fair to the developers they state on their website that there will be a host of new features available with the launch of a new multi function website so some of this may be forthcoming but then they shoot themselves in the foot by saying £9.99 is a reduced price because of this….

Anyway to the bit you’ve been waiting for. 24/7 Coach Football is without doubt a good coaching application, for me it’s let down by the expectations placed upon it by its rather large price tag. It’s the Fernando Torres of the coaching app world., pretty to look at, will do a great job at times but you just expect a bit more for the price paid. 

So with all that in mind I give 24/7 Coach Football a thoroughly respectable 3.5 / 5.

Worth buying if you’ve got an old iTunes voucher that needs using or simply money to burn.

Until next time,

Chris

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