This morning when I woke up all I kept thinking about was how the election had been called off because Gordon Brown had realised he was going to lose seats like Chatham & Aylesford and he didn’t want to take the risk. I bought all the papers and was ready to spend my afternoon enveloped in political commentary and psephological analysis.
Instead all I have been thinking about is the under 10 girls football team I help coach, who lost this morning to a physically much bigger side. I know I am a girl but I can’t help it! I keep opening the various broadsheets but my mind keeps turning back to the game.
The girls started brilliantly against a team who have been playing for a season already. So at one nil down at half time we were really chuffed and given our striker kept going on some amazing swerving runs into their penalty box we were all convinced that we had goals coming in the second half. Sadly that wasn’t the case and the physical difference between an eight year old and a nearly ten year old became all too clear after a couple of our girls, including the keeper, went off injured after having the ball booted at them. They all played very well and by all accounts very bravely but if anyone knows of any coaching tips that helps young ones understand the concept of space please leave it in the comments.
I need to get the sad faces of the little girls out of my head but the one thing I know for sure is that unlike Gordon Brown, I wouldn’t prepare the girls for the cup final, sort out the team and the tactics, get the kit all sparkly clean and advertise the game only to then call it off. In the words of an eight year old girl, it would make the team look like a bunch of scaredy cats!
3 comments:
I learnt a useful trick when I was doing some assistance work at a primary school years ago.
During a training game the teacher would randomly blow the whistle (well, not when there was a scoring opportunity) and all the kids had to freeze.
I think this worked rather well. Basically it drew to the kids’ attention the fact that they were all crowding round the ball.
Later on I went back to the school and took a lesson myself. I did the stopping-the-game-randomly thing, and had the boys run into space to show them how a pass to them could open the game up.
I rather blotted my copybook when I started joining in the game towards the end. I sent a shot over the bar, and said ‘Shit’. I don’t think they were expecting that from a ‘teacher’.
Hey! You coach a girls football team?!
Lets hope you do!
Hey, im Annette, and i was wondering if this all meant that you coach girls foot-ball.
lets hope that you do!
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