Richard Cooper

Foundation Manager at Gainsborough Trinity Foundation. A Sport & Community based charity. Former professional player. Always willing to learn. Views are my own.

[Richard Cooper @Rcoops6]

@NickBucco1 Exactly Nick. Hall has had a fantastic season and Dan Burn is never a left back! DJed Spence has been in a struggling Spurs side all season and not shown an onounce of international quality. Don’t even get me started on Ivan Toney and Jordan Henderson …..wth!

[Piers Morgan @piersmorgan]

I’m astonished that even Labour’s coup against their leader is turning into a shambolic, embarrassing farce full of dithering, timidity, U-turns, and broken promises.
So unlike them!

[James Melville 🚜 @JamesMelville]

▪️Rising unemployment
▪️Over 580,000 UK businesses closed in the year leading up to May 2026
▪️Removes the winter fuel allowance from millions of pensioners
▪️Cuts welfare from the disabled
▪️Hammers farmers
▪️Tax hikes on small businesses
▪️Betrays WASPI women
▪️Boasts about meeting BlackRock
▪️Government demand to access Apple customers' encrypted data
▪️Increases student tuition fees
▪️Promises to cut energy bills and freeze council tax and yet both increase
▪️£35bn Chagos deal
▪️£30bn on carbon capture machines
▪️£3bn a year to Ukraine
▪️Thousands of acres of prime farmland plastered with solar panels
▪️Freebies scandal
▪️Record tax burden
▪️Deepening cost of living crisis
▪️Record levels of government borrowing and interest payments to service the £3 trillion national debt
▪️2 pubs a day closing due to tax rises
▪️Totally devoid of any charisma, vision or empathy while speaking to the public like they are naughty schoolchildren
▪️Mandelson scandal

Keir Starmer is the worst Prime Minister at exactly the worst time.

[Piers Morgan @piersmorgan]

You’re a shameful moron @ZackPolanski ..
Those policemen were heroes risking their lives to stop a terrorist who’d been randomly stabbing Jews in the street in a disgusting anti-Semitic attack.
God forbid you ever have real power in Britain.

[Richard Cooper @Rcoops6]

@WCWomenFC @FAWNL Congratulations @Matt_Jones7 on an excellent achievement this season to take the team to 5th position at Tier 4. Brilliant progress and a great job in developing the players and the squad over the past couple of seasons👌

[The Posh Women @theposhwomen]

So, so deserved 🍾

#pufc

[Richard Cooper @Rcoops6]

@ChrisFunnell90 @bostontownfc Yes all good thanks Chris. Looking forward to following your positive progression next season too .

[Richard Cooper @Rcoops6]

@ChrisFunnell90 @bostontownfc Congratulations @ChrisFunnell90 and @bostontownfc Richly deserved and what a great season

[The Sporting Resource @TheS_Resource]

There's a perception in grassroots coaching that small sided games (SSG) are the bit at the end of the session where the coach steps back and lets the children have a kick about.

The "fun bit", the reward for getting through the session and I think for some coaches there's an unspoken worry behind that, a feeling that if the players are just playing a game then what exactly am I here for? If I'm not organising, setting up cones, and delivering coaching points then I'm not really coaching, and that can make you feel a bit redundant.

That couldn't be further from the truth, and I think it's one of the biggest misunderstandings in grassroots football right now, SSG's aren't the absence of coaching.

They're one of the most powerful environments you can coach in, because the game itself is doing half the work for you. Every decision a player makes in a SSG's is real., there's pressure, opposition, consequence, and context.

An activity can teach a child how to pass but it can't teach them when to pass or why that pass was the right one in that moment. The game does that, and your job as the coach is to help them see it.

The coaching doesn't stop when the game starts, it just changes shape. Instead of standing at the front telling players what to do, you're watching, observing, and picking your moments. A quick question during a natural break in play, "what did you see before you passed that?" A gentle prompt before a restart, "where's the space right now?" A conversation with a player while they're waiting to come back on, "what would you do differently if that happened again?"

Those interventions are small but they are received differently because the player has just lived the moment you're asking them about. It's not theoretical anymore, it's real and it's theirs.

The reason some coaches only use SSG's as the final ten minutes of a session is that somewhere along the way we've been taught that coaching has to look busy. It has to look structured and organised and visible but the best coaching often looks like very little from the outside. It looks like a game running smoothly with a coach on the edge asking the right questions at the right time, and a player suddenly seeing something they didn't see five minutes ago.

You're not redundant in a SSG's, you're arguably more important than at any other point in the session, because the players are making real decisions in real time and you're the one helping, guiding, facilitating and scaffolding them to understand why some of those decisions worked and others didn't.

So if you've been treating SSG's as the warm down or the reward at the end, maybe it's worth rethinking that because the game is where the learning lives, and coaching doesn't have to stop just because the bibs are on and the goals are out.

[Essex Patriot @Essex_Patriot]

⚠️ LABOUR'S HIDDEN TAX TRAP -

If you earn £100 and pay £30 income tax you're left with £70

You then buy £70 of fuel & you pay 59% fuel duty & VAT (£41.46 of the £70

Which means the government actually just got £71.46 tax from your hard earned £100.00

NO WONDER PEOPLE CAN'T AFFORD TO LIVE IN THE U.K 🇬🇧

[Kevin Edger @KEdge23]

Many warned of the consequences of Labour. Taxes up, to pay for higher benefit handouts.

“Mark my words, Labour will raise your taxes”

“You name it, Labour will tax it”.

“I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, he is going to put up your taxes.”

Don’t be fooled again. ⚠️

[The Away Fans @theawayfans]

Fair play to Crystal Palace who have become the first club to offer an aftercare programme for released players that don't have a future in football.

The three-year aftercare package will support released academy players in making a way of life, outside of football.

This is an incredible step made by the club, we need more of this!

[2000s Football ⚽ @00sFootb4ll]

Is Pierluigi Collina the 🐐of Referees?

[Richard Cooper @Rcoops6]

@mcgeeney_paddy @dannyhall04 That does bring back memories Paddy! I had forgotten about that 🔴⚪️

[Piers Morgan @piersmorgan]

It’s ridiculous, and suggests to me that either this Govt has zero courage of its convictions, or simply has zero convictions.

[Piers Morgan @piersmorgan]

Yet another U-turn.
Right decision, obviously, but the sheer volume of policy decisions this Govt then goes back on after public pressure is astonishing.

[Piers Morgan @piersmorgan]

You don’t have to be a Tory to be disgusted by this devastating mash-up of Labour Party leaders lying through their back teeth about tax so they could win power.

[Peter McCormack 🏴‍☠️🇬🇧🇮🇪 @PeterMcCormack]

@Keir_Starmer Fair is subjective. Perhaps you should read some Thomas Sowell.

[Piers Morgan @piersmorgan]

On @BBCNewsnight on Monday night, I predicted Rachel Reeves would be gone by Christmas. Following her disastrous Budget, which is a betrayal of everything she promised not to do, I expect she will be gone much sooner.
Not because she’s a woman, but because she’s hopeless.

[Piers Morgan @piersmorgan]

Labour’s plan for Britain:
Growth DOWN
Inflation UP
Borrowing UP
Taxes UP
Debt UP
Thanks Rachel! 👏👏👏🤮