Building a development framework for your club
Every club has its own approach to player development. Some focus on technical skills, others on game understanding, physical capability or performance outcomes. The Phases and Themes features allow clubs to structure that development journey in a way that aligns with their chosen coaching philosophy and curriculum.
Together, Phases and Themes provide a flexible framework for planning training sessions, organising coaching resources and reviewing player progress over time.
What are Phases?
Phases are high level development stages that group coaching activities according to a player's age, experience or developmental needs.
They help clubs organise technical delivery around a recognised player development model and create consistency across teams and coaches.
Phases can be used throughout the platform to:
- Categorise training sessions
- Organise coaching plans
- Structure player reviews
- Group development resources
- Track progression through a coaching pathway
Because phases are fully configurable, clubs can adopt the framework already used within their sport or create their own.
Football
Most football clubs follow Football Australia's National Curriculum development pathway, which consists of four key phases:
- Discovery
- Skill Acquisition
- Game Training
- Performance
These phases represent a player's progression from learning the game through enjoyment and exploration, to mastering technical skills, understanding team play and ultimately performing in competitive environments.
A club may associate age groups with these phases so that coaching plans, session libraries and review processes align with the developmental needs of each stage.
What about Hockey and Rugby?
While terminology varies between sports, similar concepts exist across many coaching frameworks.
Hockey
Hockey Australia's coaching and education framework promotes progressive development pathways, moving participants from foundation learning through higher levels of coaching and performance development. Hockey resources also heavily utilise game based learning and Game Sense methodologies to develop tactical understanding alongside technical skills.
A hockey club using ClubSort might establish phases such as:
- Foundation
- Development
- Competition
- Performance
or configure phases that directly reflect its own coaching model.
Rugby
Rugby Australia provides a player development framework built around progressive learning stages, including Learn, Play, Compete and Perform. These stages support the development of skills, game understanding and performance as players mature.
A rugby club may therefore configure phases such as:
- Learn
- Play
- Compete
- Perform
allowing players, coaches and administrators to work with familiar rugby terminology.
What are Themes?
While Phases describe the broader stage of development, Themes provide a more detailed way to classify coaching content.
Themes allow clubs to identify the specific skill, tactic or area of focus being addressed within a session, plan or review.
Common football examples include:
- Running with the Ball
- First Touch
- Striking the Ball
- One v One
- Possession
- Defending
- Finishing
A club may have dozens of themes that reflect its curriculum and coaching priorities.
Organising sessions and reviews
Themes provide an additional layer of structure that makes it easier for coaches to find and reuse content.
For example, a coach may choose to:
- View all sessions tagged as "Running with the Ball"
- Review all plans related to "One v One"
- Filter coaching resources by a specific technical area
- Analyse how frequently certain topics have been delivered
The same themes can also be used during player or team reviews, creating alignment between what was coached and what is being assessed.
Flexible and optional
Not every club requires the same level of detail. For this reason, Themes are entirely optional and can be enabled or disabled based on club preference.
Some clubs may choose to maintain a comprehensive coaching curriculum with dozens of themes, while others may use only a small number of broad categories.
The platform adapts to either approach.
A framework that grows with your club
By combining Phases and Themes, clubs can create a coaching framework that reflects their sport, development philosophy and operational needs.
Phases provide the big picture view of player development, while Themes provide the detail that helps coaches plan, deliver and review meaningful learning experiences.
Whether supporting grassroots participation, junior development pathways or high performance programs, Phases and Themes help clubs organise their coaching knowledge in a structured, consistent and familiar way.