Table 6 Negative aspects of coaching sessions

Session type/activities

“It was like embarrassing and I’m not good at dance”. (Boy, school 16 (gp 2), focus group data)

Unfairness of games

“The only thing the children didn’t enjoy at first was the unfairness, what they perceived to be unfair by not having the same chance as the other ones [on the non-smoking team]”. (Teacher 1, interview data)

Repetitive nature of sessions

“I understand the use of repeating activities but I felt that they found it slightly boring…” (Teacher (1), school 2, interview data)

Messages delivered were perceived to be incorrect

“The [football] coach got things technically wrong, he used words like ‘plaque’ instead of ‘phlegm’ and other things like statistics he got wrong”. (Teacher (3), school 2, interview data)

Lack of clarity of message/purpose of game

“Some more [sessions] than others, the football were set out really well with the representation … But it wasn’t quite as clear [the purpose of the activity] say in the dancing”. (Teacher (1), school 38, interview data)

Sedentary nature of games

“I didn’t like it when you had to sit down and write because it wasn’t really active”. (Boy, school 27, focus group data)

“I find it important to get them straight into it [the activity] and I think the dance did that whereas the football maybe could’ve said half of what he said”. (Teacher 18, interview data)

“…back to the warm up you know more kids, instead of like standing at the cones at the end, maybe like setting them a different challenge while they are waiting round because obviously the only people that were working were in the middle…”. (Coach 4, interview data)