We’ve all had our Christmas fill and it’s back to the grind for the majority of us. This weekend we have our first game of the new year as we look to continue our good run of form…
OK, the title is pretty misleading, like one of those newspaper headlines that grab your attention…well, now I’ve got yours, the game we played this past Sunday was superb, for many reasons…
I’m at a loss to explain exactly what happened today. After the momentum that we were slowly starting to build over the past few weeks we, today, took four steps back. It left me posing some questions, with each one coming to the same conclusion…today was my fault.
Nearly halfway through a two week period without a game has left me with plenty of time to reflect on my first few months as a youth football coach. How have I done? What could I do better? Am I doing right by the children? It’s enough to keep me awake at night as the one thing that I never signed up for in the first place begins to take over my life.
This week I have decided to give my boy a little extra one-on-one training. Having been taken on by the local professional football team, it was reported back to me (by his mother) that he struggled a little this week. The following night I sat down and had a chat with him, and he asked if he could have extra training – I agreed.
Continue reading “Extra Training…And That Moment Every Father Dreads.”
This morning I was awake at 5am. Yes, I’ve become that manager. Can’t sleep. Thinking about how I can get the best out of my team. We’ve made steady progress over the past few weeks and I was confident that today’s game could be our best yet.
I’ve been trying to drill it in to my team for weeks…pass and move. Telling a six or seven-year-old boy that they can’t take on five players and score all the time is more difficult than I thought. Telling them that I would be happier to see them pass than score seemed ridiculous…and it was…it didn’t work. Today I tried a new tactic, the good old-fashioned parental threat…and it worked.
“We thrashed them, and it was hilarious”. In that one sentence you will find everything that is wrong with youth football…the parents.
Continue reading ““We Thrashed Them, And It Was Hilarious”…”
Of all the games in our fixture list this season, this is the game I have least been looking forward to…the derby. The game where we play against our ‘A’ team…
Little Team Talks 