AFC Wimbledon boss wanted later start date for pre-season games and explains why no fines system is in place
Mark Robinson has lifted the lid on some of his pre-season plans for AFC Wimbledon – revealing that he’s planned games later than usual to fully prepare his team on what’s expected from them next season.
The Dons this week confirmed their first pre-season fixtures ahead of the new season, including fixtures against Kingstonian, Met Police and Dartford at the end of July.
“I can’t wait,” the Dons head coach told the South London Press just before the end of the previous campaign.
“I think we had just one midweek where we didn’t have a game. Pre-season is so important in terms of how I believe the players can achieve success. I don’t want to give too much away, but there are things that we’ve got in place, so it’s going to be absolutely key.
“Pre-season has always been one of my favourite parts of football, I absolutely love them because you get such a great length of time on the pitch with the players. I’ve actually geared pre-season so that our games actually start a bit later so we get a good length of time with the players in terms of what we want to do and the messages that we want to get across.
“Fundamentally I’m a coach, that’s what I love doing and I believe that’s my strength – coaching and improving players.”
One aspect of Robinson’s coaching beliefs that he’s discussed before is having players take ownership of their own development and behaviours.
The Dons boss gave some more insight on how he put a focus on that when he first got the job – and how there is still more to come that he wants to implement.
“I’m huge on players taking ownership of their development and a lot of the stuff that they do.” Robinson added. “I’ve always done that at academy level and I believe that’s the way forward at first team level as well. The players have shown that.
“As an example, when I first came in, the players wanted rules and fines. I said that’s not what we’re going to do. They were like no, and that’s because they’re used to it. Why do I want to fine you? We’re not working under rules and fines, we work under values and standards. A few of them were a bit like, ‘but what if I don’t do it?’ and I went ‘trust me, you will.’ Because that’s how we work, we work under values and standards and how that’s how we conduct ourselves on a day-to-day basis. It’s changing that mindset. If I’m fining people every week, then clearly the environment isn’t where it needs to be.
“There’s lots of things like that – things I believe in – that I couldn’t implement all at once because I think very differently about a lot of things. So if I’d come in and tried to implement it all at once, there’d have been a danger of [players thinking] ‘who’s this fella?’
“So there’s a lot more to come in terms of the culture, learning environments and how I see things being in the future.”
PICTURE: SEAN GOSLING