Tuesday, 5 August – training

Fantastic weather for training, dry, sunny and warm – I was even contemplating wearing shorts to training.

Good numbers at training with 16 players.  The more players we get to training usually means more parents which means more assistance for Steve and I (that’s a good thing).

Something I’ve noticed is that the kids seem to be enjoying training which motivates me to lift my game and want to deliver a good training session.

I was a bit sad to hear from Amelie’s mum that Amelie had lost a bit of interest in football and had decided to sit out the remainder of the  season.  Amelie’s mum wanted to emphasize that everyone had treated Amelie well and she had enjoyed herself (and it had nothing to do with the poor coaching) and wished the team all the best for the remainder of the season.  In my opinion Amelie had done so well and was getting better and better all the time.  She had done a great job as the only girl fitting into a team full of boys and adapting to a sport she had never played before.  I wish Amelie all the best and who knows she may come back next season.

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Round 7 v Canning Vale – Sunday, 3 August

It was a very cold morning and a very early morning because we had a 7:50am start. The sun was out which was good but the oval was very soft and muddy.

Unfortunately Steve and Nathan were unable to make the game but everyone else was at the game which gave us 13 players. Kobe went to the wrong venue but still got to the game during the first quarter, so he didn’t miss much.

I thought this was our best game of the season, everyone contributed and the skill level (despite the ground conditions) was excellent. The kids have been training hard all season and they’re starting to get some reward for effort now. Also the parent support was top shelf as usual, I only ever hear encouragement and positive comments coming from the sidelines which is the way to go.

As for the players I thought Cambell had a sensational game, it didn’t matter where he played he was always getting the ball. He kicked a couple of goals and ran the ball really well weaving his way through the packs. Cambell even dived (horizontal to the ground) across an opposition player’s foot to stop him kicking a goal.

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Tuesday, 29 July – training

Training was disrupted because we had team photos occurring half way through the session.  It was great that we had all players at training (14) and everyone remembered to bring their match day jumper.  Jared still doesn’t have one of the new match day jumpers but he was able to borrow a jumper for the photo.

We started training with a competitive one on one drill where the players had to compete for the football and then have a shot at the goals.  Alex and Matthew were pretty serious in their pair – I don’t think they even noticed the football.  Jensen and Jeremy seemed pretty evenly matched.  Caleb and Dylan just kept giving free kicks away.

Steve gave the kids a good exercise where we placed all of the footballs into the goal square then two players had to kick the footballs out of he goal square the rest of the team retrieved the footballs and returned them to the goal square.  The objective was for the two players to clear the goal square of all footballs before the footballs could be retrieved and returned to the goal square.

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Sunday, 27 July – training

With a wet couple of days leading up to Sunday I was bracing myself for a wet training session but the weather turned out to be quite nice.

We did some goal kicking practice using screw kicks and banana kicks.  We definitely need some more training in this area, most of the boys didn’t quite understand how to hold the ball to execute the kicks correctly.

The boys seem eager to learn and as mentioned before everyone is improving and getting more confident.

Here are some photos of training taken by Joshua Cable.


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All photos were taken by Joshua Cable and are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Tuesday, 22 July – training

A pretty wet afternoon for training so I wasn’t expecting too many players. Not surprisingly I was wrong again as 14 players turned up for training. The kids must be really enjoying their football because the conditions were pretty cold and wet.

Thanks to all of the parent and brother support – Steve, Scott, Jamie, Marty, Adam and Tim.

The enthusiasm was good and the skills weren’t bad considering the conditions. We started off with some handball drills, then we did some goal kicking and bump bag drills. Steve took the final drill which the kids were really getting into – a competitive game of trying to kick the ball to a team mate while the other team attempted to intercept the pass.

Here is some video of today’s training (thanks to Tim).

Round 6 v Piara Waters (Pirates) – Sunday, 20 July

Jerra and I got down to Riverton Reserve nice and early to get the ground set up for our last home game of the season. The strategy worked well because we had everything set up before 8:30am so I could relax a little bit before the game started.

We had a pretty good turn out of 13 players. Piara Waters only had 10 players so the plan was to have one of our players play for Piara Waters (I would rotate a different player each quarter) so they would have 11 players and we would have 11 players plus one interchange. Thanks to the following players for volunteering to play for Piara Waters:

1st Quarter – Dylan
2nd Quarter – Jeremy
3rd Quarter – Luke
4th Quarter – Caleb

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Tuesday 15 July – training

Back to training after a couple of weeks off.  I was looking forward to getting back into it.

It is still the final week of school holidays so I was expecting numbers to be a bit low.  There were 9 players at training, including Jared and his younger brother Matthew.

We started training with a straight forward kicking drill, just kicking in lanes with 2 players per parent helper.  I then extended the drill to include running and bouncing the football with a kick to finish off.  Only having 2 players per group kept everyone pretty busy.

The next drill incorporated using the bump bags.  We had 3 parents with a bump bag and 1 parent rolling the football to the players who were coming out in single file, picking up the football giving 3 strong hip and shoulders to the parents holding the bump bags then running on and having a shot at the goals.  All of the players did this drill very well.  It’s pleasing to see the players getting more confident with using their bodies and not being worried about being bumped.  Alex, Matthew, Jeremy and Jared were really hitting the bump bags hard.

We finished training with some match practice, 4 players v 5 players.  The quality wasn’t the best to start with but the longer we played the better everyone got.  Matthew really played well and even though he is younger he wasn’t intimidated.  There was some rough stuff between the brothers Jared and Matthew but nothing I hadn’t seen before (I have 3 sons).  Kevin was a bit of a star kicking a goal and doing a number of other really good kicks.  Jordan took a strong contested mark.  Jarred, Luke and Ethan were really hard at the football.  Alex has a great work ethic, he enjoys chasing and tackling just as much as getting a kick.  I was pleased with the effort of all the players, everyone was asking for a drink when we finished.

It was such a good training session I decided to give everyone a Freddo Frog (I must be getting soft).