I got to training at about 4:25pm expecting everyone to be there waiting for me, but I only recognised about 2 players and a couple of parents. OK, we might be a bit light on for numbers tonight I thought. I started to unpack the footballs and cones from my football bag and when I looked up there were 16 kids looking at me plus about 10 parents. Only a couple missing and everyone keen to start by 4:30pm.
Everyone seemed to be in good spirits following our first game and most importantly everyone had come back for more. The parent support was excellent, assisting with the drills and also maintaining discipline when some of the players began to lose concentration (which was happening pretty regularly).
The first half of training we concentrated on skills with handballing, kicking and marking and the second half of training we split the group in half and played a couple of 4 on 4 handball games. The big thing that stood out to me during Sunday’s game was that the players lacked some confidence to compete for the ball, so we tried to give them some practice at competing for the football and then trying to share the ball and keep it off the opposition.
We finished training with me racing the entire team (I didn’t think this one through). I finished 3rd so I was pretty happy.
I nearly forgot to mention I must have over inflated one of the footballs because during training the stitching burst and the bladder of the football started to stick out. At the end of training I actually pulled the bladder out of the football and gave it to the players to have a kick with. Everyone wanted to get a hold of the bladder so this exercise nearly caused a riot.
Next training session Sunday 18 May.