This environment provides players with video on a broad spectrum of technical/tactical information to support the coaching process. Lambert himself painstakingly pieces together clips from elite football that reflect the desired outcome of each session and each coaching interventions. These clips are annotated, edited and provided both in person and on an online platform for every player to access.

In addition to this, players are expected to digest and reflect on what they are taught through an online forum. Through Q&A, the coaches are able to understand how well each player can articulate what they are learning each week.

The real learning, though, comes in games. This is what the Marconi program consider to be the best learning environment, and therefore, provide lots of feedback to support the players. The feedback provided is always centred upon the model, delivered as close to the moment in which problems occur as possible, so players are able to correct errors and perform the right actions more often in the environment that exactly replicates what the coaches are trying to prepare them for - competitive football.

The coaches view matches as an extension of the training week, and not the pinnacle of it. Therefore, it is not uncommon to hear them speak constantly to their players throughout a game - yet it is always calm, controlled and appropriate to the circumstances of the match.

The basis for the Marconi difference, though, is in the detail. If you listen carefully to the feedback the players are being provided with, you get a real grasp of the game insight the players are being provided with.

There is great consideration in the content and delivery of each intervention from a coach - small details about the positioning of a player, where he should move, when he should pause, when he should have a little scan over his shoulder.

A Marconi player that can comprehend and bring that attention to detail to life in a game is a player that will achieve their greatest level of success. Accordingly, in these recent youth team selections, there is evidence that this is possible, even in the crowded space of Australian youth development.

There is always much fear-mongering and angry ruminations on the future of Australian football, but Marconi’s youth football program is evidence that time, patience and a focus on learning can produce results.