Funskills

[CurveBall]

Tell us how your Funskills Season is going?? What is good about the format and what improvements can you suggest.

[CurveBall]

A very big thank you to the Newcastle team on Saturday 16th July for hanging back on canteen / BBQ duty when their replacement team did not show! Much appreciated.

[instep]

Hey CurveBall, my first season back with the club after some 20 years from when I was a junior, now coaching my son in his first year. I must say I am impressed with the Funskills program and the shape of the club. A welcomed fresh approach to football in Australia, hopefully we'll see some more good international results for Aus in my lifetime!

Re funskills, again my first year however I believe it has been reduced from (2xSkills/2xGames) to (1xSkills/2xGames). I'm not aware of the reasons for this though am sure they are very valid. The struggles I faced as a coach have been:

1) kids turning up late - as much as I have addressed this with parents, it seems inevitable that there are a number of stragglers each week, often repeat offenders. Whilst we can't cater for lateness, the same kids are often missing skills sessions each week, which becomes a challenge for their development.

2) Reinforcement of skills learned during the game. At such a young age, I believe it would be really helpful to have a break between games and reinforce skills practiced / address areas for development, before sending them out again for another game. I understand this was how it was previously, and again was probably changed for good reason.

Another reason for raising these points also, is I was asked by parents to run some training mid week (didn't happen); which is probably too much at this age. (mind you the team was all newbie/first years, and we were railroaded the first few weeks, which is fine [it is about fun and learning, not winning at this stage], and it just takes a little while for the kids to learn, but parents being parents...) However, I guess they believed to some degree the skills elements were not enough.

Anyhow, thought I'd drop you some feedback, am really having a lot of fun coaching Funskills, and the kids are learning heaps and having a great time. Thank you CHUFC. ;D ;D

[CurveBall]

Thanks for your feedback instep

The problem our club faces is having 1300 players and only four full size fields and one undersize field.

With the introduction of Small Sided Football putting more demand on field space and our ever growing numbers, we had little choice but to free up some more time to fit more people in.

We would prefer to run funskills over one hour but when reviewing what other clubs do, even the 45 minutes we did this year was good value.

As our numbers continue to grow we will have increased pressure on us limiting the amount of players we allow to register simply because of field availability.

The hard and difficult decision is what age do we limit?? We have always tried to have a balanced approach.

Remember our club also provides coaching courses at the club's expense. Perhaps if you coach again next season we can enrol you in a junior license course which you will find very beneficial.

Thanks for coaching this season which is much appreciated!