After a warm up for the girls we did some cross court passing.  The girls were asked to pass the ball across the whole width of the court in 3’s whilst travelling along the edge of the court.  We asked them to pass with the foot on the outside of the court. So when travelling in one direction they used their right foot and when travelling in the opposite direction they used their left.  They also had to follow their pass across the court to the opposite side.

We moved on to a 1v1 drill with each player standing next to one post of a goal.  Coach Chris fed the ball directly down the middle of the court and the player on the left had to score, the player on the right had to stop them.  Who was quick off the mark and got to the ball first, and who was brave to try to win the ball?  We worked with the attacker on getting their body across the line of the ball and stopping the defender being able to make a challenge.  We worked on the defender being strong and quick in making a good firm tackle.  Needless to say there were some crunching tackles from all, but everyone bounced up and carried on!

We finished with a match and special mention to Kimberly for a brilliant far post finish – perfect futsal goal!

For the boys we welcomed a new member Oli – he came the week before but thought we were so good he decided to join for the rest of the half term!  We also welcomed back Luke after he missed all of the last term – we’ve missed you Luke!

With the boys we started straight into a game situation but with some conditions.  We played on a three-quarters court and every time a team scored the opposition had to take a player off for 60 seconds.  If the same team scored again, the opposition lost another player for a further 60 seconds.  We were trying to get the players to shoot as soon as an opportunity arose.

We wanted to see when a team got an overload if they could exploit it by moving the ball quickly and shooting when they could.  Coach Suzy was a formidable goalkeeper and Noah still doesn’t know how she saved some of his shots.

After a drinks break we moved the goals even closer to half a pitch and played the same game again, again emphasising shooting early and not wasting the ball when your team had the overload.  It was great to see when a team got an overload they really went for the kill and tried to score again within the 60 seconds.  Oli and Joel worked very well as a pair and caused all sorts of problems for the defence.