From The Touchline: Coping With Coaching

It's not been an easy week, cancellations are always difficult in a coach's life but the number of things that have happened all at once make it pretty tiring as well! But the week did end on a positive note for my Under 13 Girls...

Covid-19

It's never easy when you get the call on the morning of a match to say one of your players is not able to make it. All your preparation goes out of the window and your flying by your pants.

I have found that at certain age groups is you sort out two players for each position they when moments like this happen it helps you to cover that problem.

I have even made sure to have a player who will go in goal if disaster strikes and the keeper cannot play as has happened to me recently when my U11 keeper was unavailable for a couple of weeks.

Ankle injuries

I've never had such a lot of ankle injuries during a season. In one game alone two of my players had to leave the pitch due to ankle problems. I'm not sure whether they are getting injured more because they have had such a lot of time off due to the issues of Covid or as they have moved up from 7v7 to 9v9 whether they are not as fit as they should be and their bodies react differently. 

I reckon a quick chat with my strength and conditioning coach Ricardo Johnson is my next port of call to sort this our.

Referees

My usual take on referees is to come to their defence but this isn't about the behaviour of refs or the decision making in matches. I have no beef with that, you should be able to accept decisions and get on with the game. No, what I am referring to is the problem caused by a number of older referees not wanting to work with the players because they are afraid of catching Covid from them. 

It is a problem for the older ones even if they have been vaccinated they are still at risk if they catch the virus or they pass it on to their families. 

Not an easy decision for them but it has shone a light on where the clubs should be looking to attract more young people to referee games – and again that means no shouting and putting them off. I recently had to referee my own game and that frankly just doesn't work.

Ball girls

However, this week did throw up some good news in that my girls U13s were chosen to be ball girls at the Women's first team game at the weekend. They are thrilled. Great initiative by the club and they got their names read out and warmed up with the first team before the game.

This helps in many ways not only to get the girls to see what they can grow into but also to give them a feeling of belonging to a club that they are a part of. Browny points to the general manager for sorting this out!

At least it ended the week on a positive note.