With Coach Chris in Leeds with the girl’s teams, Aide and Paul again took charge of training. With so many players away, the sessions were reduced to just 2 hours. It was great to see the players back, albeit in much smaller numbers than we are used to.

The first hour worked on making sure they always had a player in their defensive half of the court and worked hard on recovery when their team lost the ball. Futsal is hard work and players must get used to this part of the game. All the girls worked extremely hard, and their effort was brilliant. The second group worked on a 4v3 full court game. They worked on looking after the ball when in possession and how to press when out of possession. They showed some fantastic futsal and the results spoke for themselves!

Notable Players of the Session

1st Session – Amelia H – she was immediately involved in every aspect of the game, joining every attack, and dropping back to control the defence, giving a 100% for the whole session, top job Amelia!

2nd Session – Clare I – she showed lots of energy and effort, covering all the court throughout the hour, with some nice touches and lots of fab futsal, awesome job Claire!

Final thoughts of a coach – Not really related to this session but a quick review of the West Yorkshire Girls Futsal League. We had 38 players represent the club from U12s to U15s and the standard of futsal on display was awesome. We had superb support from all the parents, the girls scored loads of goals, and we even had our first ever goalscoring goalkeeper – top job Jessica W!

From a coach’s point of view the really encouraging part was the buy in from so many different players of all ages. They tried and pretty much succeeded in playing futsal all the time. There is a huge temptation when you play football sides to resort to football – we simply didn’t do this. The players showed great maturity to pass the ball early, have limited touches, to recover and to try and work the ball as close to the goal before shooting – futsal! We saw some huge improvements in so many players, some technical, some tactical and some social. I don’t remember a Sunday that I didn’t drive home with a huge smile on my face.

As a club we pretty much played down an age in each age group, meaning most of the U12s were U11s, most of the U13s were U12, and so on. It is so exciting to see this as it really does showcase the depth in quality the club is producing, and the desire for everyone wanting to play. Will we be back for the next round of fixtures? Well the players want it….then absolutely!

Coach Chris