Every weekend all over the world millions of parents, children and coaches set off for their weekly sporting ritual match day. Many will follow the same process each week and will never question their routine or behaviour.

Many of these parents and coaches are well intentioned, trying to support their child and their team through match situations totally unaware of the damage they may be doing by overly involving themselves before and after but crucially during the game itself.

I say that they are unaware because if they are not, the current climate on the sidelines is far worse than I currently fear.

Recently I carried out a little experiment at an Under 8 grassroots football match in the UK. I counted the number of tactical instructions yelled from the sideline by parents and coaches to the children. There were 134 yelled out in 40 minutes of play. I must stress that this did not include positive praise.

Now imagine as adults if we were embarking on a task and during this time we were being yelled new instructions, in this case approximately four a minute. On top of that, add that some of these instructions were also contradictory. I believe that not only would we struggle to concentrate but we would struggle to make the correct decisions that we were originally carrying out. Just think how this must feel for a child actively involved in a sporting situation?