First of all, apologies for the lack of posts recently. It has been crazy here but that seems to have shifted now so back to the harsh realities of day-to-day life.

As you left us last time we were preparing for our second derby game of the season against our ‘A’ team, following on from our 9-0 defeat earlier on in the season. In brief, a much better display saw us lose ‘only’ 5-0 with their manager even claiming he was beginning to become a little worried with the score still tied at 0-0 shortly before half time.

Since then, results have been up and down although marked improvements in displays have seen us bare the ‘unlucky loser’ tag on a couple of occasions. Which brings me to the training madness tag as quoted in the title.

The week before a game in which I was quietly confident, I broke my toe…again…the big one…and it hurt. I let my coach take training as I was in no fit state to take it myself. In short, it didn’t go to plan. In fact, the session itself led to some indirect complaints being filtered back to myself. I took these seriously and broached the subject discreetly. It’s always difficult to coach seven-year-old children. I am the first to admit that. My coach is, of course, FA qualified, although the activities offered on this particular evening were perhaps not tailored to meet the needs of the children that we are actively trying to teach. As a result, at times, some of the children were left with not a lot to do, which is not a good thing at this age.

Nonetheless, we went into the game that weekend feeling that we could achieve something, and as the game entered the 40th minute (the full allocation for an under-7 game) we were winning 2-1. However, the opposition equalised. And then, in the fifth minute of added time (no complaints on the added time front here, the referee had stopped his watch on several occasions for lace-tying practice), one of my players inexplicably gave away a penalty. We on the sidelines could all see it coming. With them camped around the edge of our area without causing too much trouble, I watched as one of my midfielders started a run from the opposite side of the pitch. As he picked up pace time seemed to stand still. I shouted his name, the parents followed suit. “Stoooopppp” we all shouted in that weird slow motion sound effect normally reserved for Hollywood. He didn’t, and he lunged. It was a penalty…a definite penalty…and they scored…and we lost.

Nonetheless, we played incredible. A text from their manager claiming the result was harsh on us later that night confirmed as much. And I was exceptionally proud. So I sent out a group parent text. With the indirect complaints towards last weeks training session still ringing in my ears, I reinforced how proud I was of each and every child. I stated that this coming week I wanted training to be a little different, most importantly I wanted it to be fun. I told each parent to instruct their child to come to training that week prepared for a series of games. The winner of each game would get to pick a football-related exercise that we would do together as a team.

It went down a storm. Every child arrived excited. The winners of every game chose an exercise, from a shooting game which involved a series of levels in which they had to score to progress, to football bulldog which required them to dribble from one side of a square to another without getting tackled. If they did they went into the middle until there was one person left standing.

At the end when I was collating all the balls and everyone else had disappeared, one of my boys came running back. Thinking he had forgotten something, I asked him what was the matter. He simply said: “Jamie, that was really fun tonight. Can we do that again?”

And that is what it is all about, isn’t it? That is the reason we signed up to this in the first place. To let the children have fun whilst hoping that some of our limited knowledge of the game rubs off on them a little.

Plenty has happened since then, but I wanted to share that little story with you as a ray of light amongst all the difficulties that we endure as youth football managers. We don’t always get it right, but it’s how we react that really matters.

Follow me on Twitter – @jamie_ward84