Category: Irish Grassroots Football

When your 7 or 8 years old season ends, give your child a break from the game. Kids might be playing an entire year. Even if you child doesn’t want one, I suggest he/she takes one.

Muscles need to relax

Let his or her muscles relax. This could be the time to try something else and use different muscles groups. To often kids are asked to continue training all year around, not even the pro’s train all year, so why ask 7 or 8 year olds to do so. After all these little guys and girls are still growing and constantly running & doing the same techniques in a certain sport (which only concentrates on some types of movement) cannot always be good for the child. Generally a child will be using the left or right side, depending on what foot they kick with (Football is a very uncoordinated sport).

Sometimes taking a break from a certain sport like soccer and trying something new for a month or so, will help with a players coordination and balance. They might just want to take a break altogether and run around after friends, climb walls and play chasing. They may start swimming  or cycling with all this lovely weather we are getting.

Using other parts of the body and moving in different directions or even just relaxing can be good for your child. Lots of young players are experiencing injuries that pro’s usually get and this has a lot to do with to much too soon and never ending seasons with training all year around.

186,000 soccer related injuries with 80% of those under the age of 24

According to the US Consumer Product Safety Commission in 2006 there were more than 186,000 soccer related injuries with 80% of those under the age of 24.

Texas Health Resources Fort Worth physical therapist Kiley Cohen said she sees a lot of soccer related injuries–some incredibly young. “I’ve seen them in the past as young as 12 and 13 years old that have torn ACL’S.”
Texas Health Resources Dr. Damond Blueitt said soccer can take a toll on feet ankles and knees–not to mention the occasional concussion–but most injuries are the product of simply playing too much soccer.

“Most of the soccer injuries are the overuse injuries because a lot of these young athletes play soccer all year around and never really take a break so they get some overuse injuries,” Dr. Blueitt said. A girl called Dennise is lucky–she’s never been hurt before even tough she played without a break for six years. “A season was over on Friday and the next Friday another season will begin,” Dennise said.

For now Dennise will have to get her kicks by watching the soccer on TV–after all it’s the sport she’s loved since she was six years old. “It’s amazing seeing all those players. I kind of get teary eyed myself,” Denise said. “I’m going to be back in January.”

-End

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This weekend Saturday and Sunday, kids, parents and coaches can see some of the greatest talent on show in Dublin. The DDSL cup finals will take place at the AUL and the NDSL will take place at the Oscra Traynor Centre.

Showtime

Anyone interested in watching some Irish grassroots football of the highest calibre should get down to either venue from 10am until 3pm.

Good luck to all teams involved and lets hope that coaches and parents can refrain from marching the sideline instructing theirs players with every single move they take.

Be fair to your players

To the coaches, be fair to all your team and give every single player some game time, after all they all contributed in some way to get the team to this great occasion and possibly a once in a life time experience for some player and their families..

I know alot of time and effort goes into organising this event and although I firmly believe some ages should not be in cup competition playing 11v11s until much later in life, it’s still a great occasion for all concerned and organisers etc

Bets of luck from the coach diary

“Let the kids play”

If you have a cup final coming up, be sure to let me know, Leagues, Clubs or Players!

Being In Sports

While many parents considering placing their children in organised sports and know the inherent dangers of competitive play, they may not be as aware of the benefits. Sports participation offers health and fitness advantages as well as teaches children the skill of cooperation and life lessons about winning and losing.

Fitness

Organised sports get children off the sofa and on the pitches. By participating in an organised sport help builds a childs stamina and making him more physically fit and healthier. The exercise from organised sports can help a young child to reach his activity goal for the day and decrease the likelihood of developing chronic medical conditions resulting from inactivity.

Cooperation

There is no “I” in team, and few team can rely on a single player for the team’s success. Every player on a soccer, team plays an important part in the game, and without the full cooperation of all team players, the team cannot be successful. By being a part of a team, a child learns to play his own part to help his whole team be successful.

Learning About Winning and Losing

Sports has winners and losers. Losing a game can build character as the members of the team must learn from their mistakes and strive to make a difference at the next game. Team sports also teach children to become gracious winners, as many teams encourage congratulations for both teams on a good game played, no matter the outcome (important this is always encouraged). While losing hurts, and winning feels good, learning how to not overreact to either situation can make a child a better person.

“Sports can provide excellent educational opportunities for social development because many of the social and moral requirements for participation in sports are parallels to how individuals must function in a law-abiding society,”

If you child is not involved with a team, then get them involved in a team sport or in a past time that will keep them off the streets and hanging around with the wrong people and into something positive. To many children are gallivanting these days with no respect for society or the law. Organised sports, gives kids an opportunity to become community guardian as apposed to community nightmare!

Sport is good!

Dublin City Council / FAI Road to Europa League Finals 2011

Tonight I witnessed some very pleasant football by both boys and girls from u10s club teams. The FAI ran a competition for u10s to take part in the Europa League final on the 18th May at the Dublin Arena or Aviva Stadium as we know it. Jobstown Celtic all weather pitch was the location for one of the 4 heats contesting in Dublin today.

The Kids Rules

The rules were simple, no parents allowed to coach or shout, just encouragement and coaches were asked to supervise. Squads of 6 players participating in a 4v4 games with

• No goalkeepers,
• No slide tackles,
• Shaking of hand before and after the games
• No foul language aloud
• No set positions
• Points deduction for abusive parents or coaches.
• Bonus points for sportsmanship (not sure if any team got them)
• Tip off (2 players stood back to back with the ball in between them and turned on the sound of the whistle, when the ball dropped the game was off)

3 Goals to score in

The small pitches had an extra 2 goals either side of the main goal and if you could dribble the ball through either of those goals after 3 consecutive passes were made from different players you got 2 points. 1 point for scoring in the big goal. The aim of the exercise was too get kids passing the ball, get them thinking for themselves.

It also got kids getting the ball wide, moving the ball from left to right and thinking and communicating with each other. The games started slowly, but then the kids seemed to get the hang of what they were doing; their was some great 3 and 4 touch passes which lead to goals in the main goal and some tricky play which lead to some great little dribbles through the cones in the corners.

“Let the kids play”

I was a little disappointed with some coaches who seemed to be taking the games a little to seriously counting their teams passes (1…2…3..etc) and then telling them to score where they taught best. After all, the exercise was for the kids to make those decisions by themselves, not have adults telling them what to do.

A lot of good things came of this exercise, It proved that playing 4v4s or 5v5s is so much better for these young players. Players enjoyed it and they got…

1. Plenty touches of the ball
2. Rules made by adults for kids and with the interests of the kids at heart NOT THE ADULTS
3. There was lots of goals scored
4. The play was quick
5. The kids had to think quickly
6. All players got plenty of football and all played
7. Players keeping the ball
8. Players doing tricks (No one telling them not to)
9. No parents yelling
10. No coaches barking orders or shadowing the players (some still a little competitive)
11. And all the kids wanted to do, was play and score goals.

Back to Basics

Now fast forward  to this weekend, some of the same kids will be out playing 9v9s football or even 11v11s on huge pitches and you can take all those 11 positive points and throw them in the bin. Why? well, because we are putting kids onto adults football pitches and asking them to play an adults game, with adults rules and with more adults running the lines, abusing refs and making decisions for the kids at play. Adults running the administrations, so far removed from what a 9 or 10 year old wants and needs its scary!!

This was an opportunity for the leagues to witness something positive, something that the kids enjoyed, finally a game organised by adults that the kids could make decisions for themselves and not have the added pressure of 3 to 4 adults all screaming 3 to 4 different instruction at them. The kids football was back for ……2 hours…..!

Positive Exercise

So too, Gerry Reardon and all the FAI staff who helped organise this very worthwhile exercise, even if my team didn’t win; who cares the kids all won in my eyes.

P.s Don’t give up on this, it was a brilliant night of football and with a little fine tuning definitely something that can be rolled out in the future.!!

Looking forward to the finals on Tuesday the 17th May and of course the main event on the 18th May Benfica V Porto, I think so!

– well not all, because we know that their are some amazing coaches, mentors and administrators working in the game but their are also some who should not be involved and working with kids.

This weekend I dropped by some of the Easter tournaments  going on around the city and I couldn’t get over how competitive most of the coaches were. I assumed this mini tournaments were for fun and an opportunity for coaches to watch their players and give players who don’t usually play some game time. How wrong was I!

Commentators

One coach of an u9’s team spent the entire tournament telling his players what to do. He coached every single player through every single game. At one stage he even decide to give his views on how every single player was doing and even tho they were winning by a good score, he felt he had to give a running commentary on how each player was doing;  7 of the 9 players were given negative comments by this coach. To my pleasure the losing coach, sat back and gave minimal instruction to his player and in fact the losing team was playing much better football.

Rules that have the kids interest at heart

The problem with these tournaments is that clubs who run them, don’t really think about kids; for instance they kids were playing 20 minutes half’s all the way to the final which for me is way to much time for u9’s to be playing on a hot day. Like the previous post there should be a rule where teams have to play all players for a minimum amount of time; this would stop teams from trying to win over player development and fun.

While I congratulate clubs for organising these tournaments, they should try and keep the teams local so that parents and kids don’t have to travel across the city to play. We need to get back to community football and inviting local teams helps build and encourage kids to play within their community.

Fun is key

My concern is that these so called tournaments should be primarily about fun and a lot of what i saw yesterday was not fun for the kids participating. I witnessed kids breaking down and being then told to stay on, I saw other kids hobbling through games, other coming of crying and you could clearly see some were struggling. Some of the comments from the coaches on the line were a disgrace and made me wonder how parents could leave their children with these people. Of the majority of the teams participating the coaches were running the lines as if these players were professionals and this was the Champions Leagues.

Strict Rules – With the kids in mind

All tournaments should have strict rules and designed for the kids by the kids. Clubs organising these tournaments and referees should have power to step at any stage if they feel kids are being unfairly treated, sideline should be silent and tournament ethos should be about letting the kids play.

“This is all so a great opportunity for child development offices of certain leagues to attend and witness how some of these coaches are treating their players”.

“My main thrust is to try to get adult egos out of children’s games.” and some of these tournaments this weekend had so much of what I despise.  “can you get adults in a child’s endeavor to think more like children? The biggest problem with sports today has been that 9-year-olds are being coached and  by people who haven’t seen the age of 9 for more than 30 years. They bring a 40-year-old mind to the pitch to organise and coach a game that theoretically is supposed to be serving the children.”

Bob Bigelow

Bob Bigelow, former Boston Celtics forward – For the past 16 years, Bigelow, a Winchester native, has been discussing the idea that adults involved in the organisation of youth sports who are living out their own sports fantasy through their children are sending the wrong message to kids. His presentations to parent groups have taken him around the globe several times.

Bigelow states “The first battleground is to get adults to understand what being a kid is about — what is that child within the context of sports as an activity? The younger these children are,” he said, “they have fare more incapabilities (sic) than capabilities. It is hard for adults to understand when their core mentality and understanding of sports is gained from watching TV or what they learned in high school sports.”

“People who have no physical education or child development background have no business coaching children, especially those younger than 14,” he said. “Too many coaches who get involved in the youth sports program use the one-size-fits-all approach.” Not all those involved in organised youth sports have the wrong approach, according to Bigelow.

“The delicious irony in all of this is that so many of the adults in youth sports, the lion’s share being age 28 to 45, grew up differently than I did,” he said. “Those in the 35- to 45-year-old group were involved in organized youth sports. At my age, 98 percent of what I did as a athlete was done with other kids, no adult involvement until I was about 14. As kids, we modified, adapted and figured it out on our own. We didn’t have adults interfering.
”

I’m off to another one tomorrow let’s see what happens…

What I don’t understand about this tournaments is why aren’t they a round-robin; why ask kids 9 and 10 year olds to play 20 minutes a half against 2-3 teams when they could play 20 minutes, just one half and play everyone in the so called tournament and why have medals for 1st and 2nd only, when all the kids played their part in making the tournament a success. Tournaments or blitz’s whatever you want to call them at certain ages should not be about a winner but more about all the teams competing and making sure every player gets enough game time. Whatever about remembering you won the league at age 10, who the hell is gonna remember who won a u9s or 10s etc Easter tournament. I just don’t get it!!!

Details

Put your feet this up… Friday April 22nd KO 11am SKB VS BRONDBY (Denmark) 12-30 WBA VS ST PAULI (Germany). 5PM BRONDBY VS SUNDERLAND and 6.30 ST PAULI VS ARSENAL. It is an under 12 tourament full day Friday and Saturday with the placed games and final on Sunday

Go along to see some top class European football in action this weekend, if its the last two Tournaments were anything to go by then this promises to be even belter!

Entrance fee only €2

Any other big tournaments out there, let me know