Saving Opposition Footage as a Sports Coach

Club and school sport generates a lot of video, posted by teams, parents and supporters. For a coach preparing for a fixture, it is genuinely useful and genuinely fragile.

Gather before the week of the match

Posts come down, accounts get restricted, and the material you wanted is gone precisely when you need it.

Save what is public at https://pewauhondo.com/download/ as you come across it rather than when the fixture arrives.

Take a good quality

You are looking at shape, positioning and movement, often at a distance from the camera. A soft file hides exactly what you are trying to see.

Take the highest available and accept the file size.

Organise by opponent and date

One folder per team, with the date and the fixture in each filename. When you meet them again next season, that folder is your starting point.

Note the competition and the venue too. Teams play differently away from home.

What to look for is not what to record

Resist saving whole matches. Clips of set pieces, transitions and how a team restarts play are more useful and far easier to review than ninety minutes.

If you have a long recording, trim to the passages you will actually show.

Use it with players carefully

Showing players footage of opponents is normal. Showing them footage of their own mistakes needs more thought, particularly with young players.

Lead with something they did well before anything corrective. The point is to change the next performance, not to prove a point.

Consent matters with young people

Any footage involving under-eighteens needs parental consent for use beyond private coaching review, and your club or school should have a policy.

Read it before you build a library rather than after somebody asks. If a parent asks for footage of their child to be removed, remove it.

Do not repost

Somebody else filmed the video you are studying. Using it to prepare is ordinary coaching. Reposting it, or building public content from it, is not.

Credit anyone whose footage you show to your own team.

Keep your own match footage

The most valuable library is your own. Film your matches, organise by date, and you build a record of how your team actually develops.

Players and parents ask for this material years later, and clubs almost never have it.

Storage

Match footage is large. An external drive kept by the club rather than on a personal laptop, because coaches move on and the archive should not leave with them.

Share clips, not full matches

Players will not watch ninety minutes and should not be asked to. Two or three short clips with a specific point land far better.

Send the file rather than a link, since many will not have data when they open it.

Watch it twice, differently

Once for the shape of the team, once following a single player. The second pass shows habits the first misses entirely.

Note timestamps rather than impressions, so you can show the moment rather than describe it.

Start with your next opponent: save what is public at https://pewauhondo.com/download/ this week rather than the night before.

A GIFT OF LOVE CITIZEN TV WEDNESDAY 23RD SEPTEMBER 2026 FULL EPISODE