coaching grassroots

[RobNewman'sblisteringpace 25]

Does anyone else on here coach a grassroots junior team?

I've just started my third year coaching my younger son's team.  Had a bunch that had never played before, so lost every game in year 1. Last year was a bit better, but it has been a steep learning curve.  On the plus side, I have a full squad, they are getting better each week and have really bonded into a happy team of friends.  Best of all, they play in yellow so I can legitimately stand on the side and shout, "come on you yellows."  

[canarydan23 4,060]

1 hour ago, RobNewman'sblisteringpace said:

Does anyone else on here coach a grassroots junior team?

I've just started my third year coaching my younger son's team.  Had a bunch that had never played before, so lost every game in year 1. Last year was a bit better, but it has been a steep learning curve.  On the plus side, I have a full squad, they are getting better each week and have really bonded into a happy team of friends.  Best of all, they play in yellow so I can legitimately stand on the side and shout, "come on you yellows."  

I coach my lad's team, they're heading into U10s. Got the same 9 lads we had from U6s and have added 3 over the past few months to get ready for the transition to 9-a-side next year.

They're quite a decent team so as a consequence we've been playing the better teams at our age group and to be honest, I've found the whole experience pretty dispiriting. There are some absolute weapons coaching kids out there, and some similar drips parenting them. I enjoy it when we come across an opponent with a decent coach and set of parents who just let the kids play, but at times last season they seemed to be the minority. More often than not you get coaches and parents pressuring the ref, making kids cry with their "feedback" and an absolute desperation to win. We had a team last season with their fans and coaches literally screaming at the ref to blow the whistle. I'm talking high-pitched yelling, verging on hysteria all because they were 2-1 up but we were in the ascendancy and threatening to equalise and they thought time should be up.

Edited September 4, 2022 by canarydan23

[TheGunnShow 5,985]

Don't coach, but used to referee regularly (and still referee a local girls team as a couple of friends of mine manage them). Kids football is, from my experience, ruined by parents who labour under the delusion that their little one is the next big thing and by coaches who use the kids to live out their World Cup manager-winning fantasies.

I have to say, refereeing girls football has been an interesting change of pace over the couple of years I've helped their side out. Not sure if this is social conditioning, but the girls rarely dissent compared to the lads. I do see a bit at U13s upwards as puberty kicks in, but I'd almost be more worried if they didn't - kids have to test boundaries at some point, and the referee is an obvious test. If there's anything that does make me roll my eyes so hard that I can see my dinner the previous night, it's someone saying "xyz should be more of a role model".

Ha. I was very active in junior football the time Eric Cantona plonked his boot in that Palace fan's head. Cantona did have a fair old influence on kids, but it was usually the upturned collar and whacking a free-kick into the top bins before saying "au revoir" in that old Nike advert. Don't remember ever pulling a kid away from karate-kicking someone in the old Bolton Boys' Federation, that's for sure.

(The bigger problem was the ****ing nonce who was General Secretary, but that's a story for another time, maybe).