A tough opposition who got tougher as the game went on.
Warm-up.
The warm up was good, although maybe the boys were not as focused as in previous weeks.
The pre-game talk was the usual message;
I also touched on trying to play wide and switch the play but i think at this point i definitely lost the boys attention. Too much talking and not enough visuals. Lesson noted.
The game - we started much stronger than the opposition, and dominated the early exchanges. Slowly the opposition came into the game. As we moved players through positions we lost our way and struggled to get success in the 3 main focus areas. Towards the end of the game however we came back strong and were unlucky to not get a draw.
It is slowly becoming clear that as a team we are much stronger when certain players play in certain positions but this is exactly the reason why we will not take the easy option of simply doing this.
Richard, Sam, Zac, Hunter and Alek do really well in defense. This requires intelligence, maturity and game understanding. When we had any of these players in defense as a team we were stronger. But players may also get bored if played there for 2 long. Zac was great in defense in the first 10 minutes but you could see after 10 minutes he wanted to get more involved. This is totally understandable. I need to be mindful of not having players play in defense for more than approx 10 minutes at a time. Lesson 2 learned.
Playing James and Levi in defense at the same time was a bit of a disaster. James is too busy to hold shape, and Levi doesn't understand the game enough to work out where to be and what to do. This is exactly why they both need to play in defense more. We may cop goals while these boys are learning the role of a defender.
We don't have too many natural midfielders (up and down players) so at times we will get caught undermanned in defense (as we do have a few ball watchers when the ball is lost). My wife reckons i should be more demanding in games - but the journey is long and i feel in the long run a more patient approach is the better one. Dont get me wrong - i want to be alot more vocal and demanding, and if the boys were older i would be - but for now i do not feel it is in their best interests. I will be demanding at training, and let the games be theirs.
The perhaps boys also need to hear a new message rather than being shouted at about not executing the current tasks well. So lesson 3; Change the message when the gains begin to diminish. With this said, I will shift the focus of training for the next 2 or 3 weeks to;
As always - technique (inside control and inside passing is still a major development project). Any thing you parents can do to help your child with this will make a huge difference to your child development.
With this in mind check this weeks technical development homework.
An apology
I also made a mistake with the subs at the end. I took Richard off instead of Marley. I apologized to Richard as soon as i realized and got him back on. I will make mistakes in future no doubt and apologize in advance for this. Hopefully i get the benefit of the doubt if a mistake affects your child, but also please let me know if you feel i have been unfair to your child, as it will never be my intention.