Manor CE Academy futsal sessions were treated to a guest coach tonight – Joe McKechnie, ex England and Scotland Cerebral Palsy player.  Click here for a full story on Joe.

The girls started with a warm up, where they had to get across the court without being tagged by Joe.  They then repeated the drill with a football and had to not get tackled – some serious cheating went on here, both with and without the ball!

They progressed onto a technical drill based on ‘piggy in the middle’.  Two players had to pass the ball below waist hight across a channel without the middle player intercepting it.  This progressed onto limiting the movement of the middle player and eventually allowing the middle player to press either end player, when they thought it was right.  In principle it seemed an easy drill but the girls said it was harder than they expected.

We moved onto a finishing drill with 1 attacker and 1 defender.  If the defender could stop the attacker from scoring for 3 seconds, another defender joined in and helped.  If the attacker kept the ball from the two defenders for a further 3 seconds another attacker joined.  This continued until we got to 3v3.  This is a brilliant drill because players have to learn to change their mind-set depending on the numbers on the court.

We finished with a game in which Joe and Mr Foster took one team, and Coach Chris took the other.  In a nail-biting finish Coach Chris and his team held on to a 5-4 win, but not after Joe had scored a cracker!

Girls’ player of the week – Abbi – she made some fantastic saves both in the technical drills and in the final match, fantastic effort Abbi.

Click here to see some images from this weeks futsal session at Manor CE Academy

The boys did the same warm up as the girls but their first technical session was a passing drill.  They worked in groups of three to create a ‘runaround’ with the starting player ending up with the ball at the end.  This progressed onto adding a shot on goal, and finished with an active defender working against the two attackers.  Great fun to watch and to see how the boys moved the ball quickly and effectively.

In the final match, we limited the number of players on the court to 5v5 and every 60 seconds switched one of the subs with an on field player.  At times it was chaos with players coming and going but again it showed how much the players needed to be aware of what was going on around them.

Another great session and huge thank to Joe for coming along, he was a real inspiration to coaches and players alike and we look forward to welcoming him back soon!

Boys’ player of the week – Luke – he is really improving week on week, and the coaches are really impressed by his effort and especially his attitude – he just gets on with, top result Luke!

We are always looking for new members! Why not beat the cold and continue playing all year round inside?