Assessment · 6 min · 2 September 2026

Why your session plan fails the assessment

It is almost never the drill. It is that you cannot say what the session is for in one sentence.

I have read a few hundred session plans and marked a fair number of them. The ones that fail rarely fail because the practice was bad. They fail because the coach could not tell me what it was for.

The one-sentence test

Write what the session is for in one sentence, without using the words 'improve' or 'work on'. If you cannot, the session is not ready — and an assessor will find that out in the first two minutes by asking you exactly this question in slightly politer words.

Objectives are not topics

'Pressing' is a topic. 'The far-side winger recognises the trigger to tuck in and does it within two seconds' is an objective. One of those you can coach and see; the other you can only talk about.

The four-minute collapse

Most sessions fall apart about four minutes in, when the practice turns out to be too hard or too easy. The plan that passes has the next step already written down. The plan that fails has the coach standing still, thinking.

What to do this week

Take your last session plan. Write the one sentence. Then look at whether anything in the plan actually produces it. Most of the time about half the session is there out of habit, and cutting it is the whole improvement.