It was great to see everyone at futsal today, lots of smiles, lots of hard work and even more brilliant futsal!

We had six, yes six new players come and try Futsal for the first time – welcome Eady, Mollie, Sacha, Ruby, Zarah and Isabella, we hope you had fun and we look forward to seeing you all again very soon!

We continued our work on defending, but with a twist today. The first group were introduced to some of the fundamentals of futsal. We continued the thoughts about keeping the ball in play, not kicking it away, and today added recovery. It is a non-negotiable! If you didn’t try and recover, your team left the court!

The second and third groups worked on marking a player. Each team had a set of coloured cones and they could only tackle the player on the opposition team with the same coloured cone. There was no hiding on the court today, were you went, your partner duly followed!

Click here to see all the pictures from the session

Player of the week for the first hour was Naomi L – she may be the youngest member of the club but she has such a huge heart! She really tried with her recovery runs and is now using the sole of her foot every time without being reminded! She is also very happy to share her ideas or opinions on pretty much anything, futsal or not! Well done Naomi, you are one little superstar!

Player of the week for the second hour was Olivia A – in the cones games, Olivia worked really hard to lose her partner, sprinting the full width and length of the court to find space. When she was defending she stuck like glue to her partner, fantastic attitude and brilliant to watch. Well played Olivia, what a brilliant attitude!

Player of the week for the third hour was Sophie W – Sophie is ace, she has such a delight to coach! We are not sure what she had for breakfast but we hope she has it every week! We have never seen her so determined, so physical and her play was so good to watch. If Sophie continues like this she will surely be one to watch for the ladies team…simply brilliant Sophie!

Final thoughts of a coach – I purposely made the sessions mentally challenging today, not because I was being mean, but to see how the players responded to the challenge. I am delighted to say that I was again hugely impressed. Some players got it straight away, some needed several explanations, others took their time, watched their teammates and copied the outcomes. As coaches we have to be patient with how players learn, each player will find their own route to the solution, just allow them to do so.