Playbook
The grassroots coaching playbook.
Five practical guides for volunteer coaches. Real Tuesday-night reality. No padded content.
Who this is for
Written for the coach who's planning training at 5pm because it starts at 6.30
Each guide is short enough to read in one sitting, long enough to be useful. No filler, no SEO padding, no "in today's fast-paced world" intros.
Written by the same people building Trac. Most of us coach. The advice comes from real touchlines, not a content agency's keyword list.
The five guides
Read in any order. Start with whichever pain is closest.
The Fair Play Award — what taking it seriously actually means
We walloped some teams this season. We were a competitive U12 side. And opposing teams across the Hull & District league voted us their Fair Play Award winners for 2025/26. That's the lesson — and the real success — of the season.
Read the guide
Our first season heading the ball — and a clean sheet from corners
How we trained heading at U12, the corner routines on both sides, the back-post strategy that beat Esperanza, and the Trac data that proved it worked.
Read the guide
When it kicked in for me — U12, a league table, and the question I had to answer
Last season was the first proper competitive year. Finally a league table. Finally the question: how do we actually win this — and how do I still keep every lad involved?
Read the guide
The proper way to import a season from FA Full-Time
A step-by-step guide to importing your team's FA Full-Time fixtures, including the five things to double-check and a printable cheat sheet for the noticeboard.
Read the guide
Trac quick start — from sign-up to your first live match
Set up the account, build the squad, add a fixture, send availability, pick a lineup, generate the live-match pin. Twenty minutes top to bottom.
Read the guide
Where this playbook came from
The five-principle coaching philosophy behind Trac — written by Adam, the bloke who built it. It started with the Springhead Spartans in 2021 and a team of eight-year-olds who needed to actually win sometimes.
Read the guideWho writes the playbook
Grassroots coaches, not content marketers
Written by Adam Jackson, a grassroots manager in East Yorkshire and the coach who built Trac. Most pieces draw directly from his team's full 2025-26 BETA season on Trac, Springhead U12 Spartans. The data. The decisions. The mistakes. The promotion. Drafted on Sunday evenings after the kids are in bed.
Try Trac while you're here.
The playbook is free for everyone. The app is free to run a season. Pay once for premium (AI match reports + analytics).