Quote ="SmokeyTA"I think your last point is nonsense to be honest. it is nothing to do with 'control' its common sense. You are saying that a coaches job at that age is to, what could legitimately be described, as making his player play worse. Kids, parents, coaches everyone wants to win. You are demanding they do something other than try to win. Even more than it forcing teams to do things that aren't working as well at that level, It doesn't make sense that forcing the young Thurston to ignore that massive gaping hole in the defensive line in favour of running a set play to an inferior player is going to make him better. It wont. The difficult part of being a half back is not running, passing or kicking or running a set play, its knowing when to run, when to pass, when to kick and when to run that set play. Teaching kids to pass regardless of what they see isn't going to produce generation of world class half backs, it would produce a generation who wont recognise whats in front them.
I don't dispute that at young ages things like more small sided games, weight restrictions, and better coaches teaching better skills and a focus in coaching them is massively important. But that is an entirely different thing to not funnelling talent to a level congruent with that talent. Every sport in the world does so. Players improve playing with and against better players.
In fact what, I agree with Hutchie, that there will always be coaches who prepare teams to win, and its difficult to say they are doing a bad job. But them doing so effects everything. Kids however talented aren't going to enjoy getting beat, they definitely wont enjoy losing by big margins, they certainly wont stop doing the things that are working when that is one of the reasons they are losing big.'"
It's not nonsense to suggest that junior coach should be the one in charge of his team and not the juniors themselves!
It's also not nonsense to suggest that an u11's coach should be looking at something other than simply winning the next game. That right there is THE problem with the amateur game in a nutshell. It's actually not the coach's job to win the next game. It's the coach's job to teach the basic skills to as many kids as possible. That entails a fun environment not a pressured one. Now it's important to win SOME games in the year as, as you say, no-one enjoys getting beaten every week. But winning every week doesn't teach the kids their skills.
The really difficult part is the decision making and no-one is saying you never let the kids have a go. But it's your job as coach to provide a structure to their game. Firstly to allow the kids to use the skills you should be teaching them during the week, that are also lacking in general, but also, more passing gets the ball to more kids and so involves, for example, the ones stuck out on the wings who rarely get the ball. Also, at junior level, the big gaps are usually found on the wings, not in the middle. What you get in the middle is missed tackles. Which doesn't help at all with the halfbacks skills because at some point as he goes up the pyramid those missed tackles stop happening.
So you agree coaches should teach and encourage the skills but then call my post nonsense?
I've been coaching kids for over 10 years, I would struggle to say categorically who would benefit from being funnelled into a performance based system at 10 years old. Some probably would, but the majority, in my view, would suffer from being moved away from friends at their original club and then being in a pressured environment at a very, very young age.
It's not necessary and is counter productive in my view. At this age we just need lots of kids practicing the skills.
The skills gained from playing against "good opposition" come much, much later. We've to teach them how to pass & catch and gain confidence tackling first.
