doing it for the kids:
|
Posted: May 1st 2008
Click here to feedback
I had a run out with my daughter’s team the other week (when I say ‘run out’, I didn’t pull on a strip and make like a 10 year old girl – no, I was on touchline duties). Due to my commitments with the lads’ team, I’m more of a bit part player with the girls, but I love helping out when I can.
Girls’ football is refreshingly different. At the risk of sounding patronising, it has a naïve charm that is lost to the boys’ game by about the age of 6. These 10 year olds play without any trace of cynicism at all.
I reckon it’s all down to the fact that most of the girls, unlike their boy counterparts, clearly don’t go to many live games or even watch much football on TV. This has its frustrations, eg talk to a group of boys about the relative merits of 2-3-1 / 3-2-1 / 2-2-2 / 3-0-3 formations (we’re talking 7-a-side ‘mini soccer’ here) and they’ll engage in the debate with enthusiasm and no little tactical acumen. The girls will look at you blankly, a mixture of bemusement and “so what?” etched on their faces. Just gimme the ball and let’s PLAY!
So with the girls you get none of the histrionics aped from Match of the Day that you get with the boys…none of the shouts of “second ball!”, “send it!”, “touch tight!” and the rest.
The game in question really brought this all home. We were lacklustre in the first half against a team we expected to beat, and perhaps deservedly fell for a sucker punch, and went in one down at half time.
Early in the second half, we found ourselves camped in the opposition half, but totally lacking ideas or a cutting edge. A quick break, a speculative shot – 2-0. We then pulled one back with 10 minutes or so to go, more due to the oppo relaxing than anything spectacular on our part. Pandemonium broke out.
Suddenly it was one way traffic. If we’d been lacklustre before, we were now…er…full of lustre (?). The equaliser came, and then, with a beautiful inevitability, a third.
Barely two minutes left on the clock, and in similar circumstances I can honestly say I’ve seen boys’ teams start to run down the clock. All the tricks are there, albeit in amateurish form. Especially that most annoying one of all – taking the ball to the corner flag and fannying around with it for as long as possible while precious seconds tick by.
Not for the girls. It’s the opposite. As if there’s some imaginary Kop behind them chanting “we want 4!”, they up the tempo even more. Bodies hurtle forward with the momentum of being on top. A quick counter by the opposition has hearts in mouths on the touchline, but the chance goes wide. Our player literally sprints behind the goal to collect the ball and welly another goal kick upfield. Time wasting is quite literally the last thing on her mind.
We hold on for the win. I vow never to coach them in time wasting tactics, even if it’s 1-0 in the last seconds of a Cup Final. We must never kill that spirit.
Off to the Women’s FA Cup Final on Monday…be interesting to see if the women’s game is also as cynicism free compared to its male counterpart as is the case with the kids…