TAFA has been a great outlet when it comes to my sporting endeavours. As the months of being an intern has progressed I have had the ability to lead my own coaching sessions. Every couple of weeks Henry (the coach for the senior girl’s team) asks Chloe and I to lead a couple of sessions. At first, it made me very anxious to think that I would have to be leading a whole session. How am I supposed to lead a session if I don’t know how to coach myself!?!? However, I took to the internet! I must have been looking through drills for hours, trying to find something that would be fun to do but also helps in the long run.

Senior Girls. Photo: Mr Lockwood

I was in charge of doing a warm-up and a drill, Chloe was in charge of doing a more extended drill. We started off the session by getting the girls to do a couple of laps. We then got straight into my warm-up drill. I laid the cones in a square shape, each with a ball around the square and then an additional cone in the centre of the square with a ball sitting on top of it. The girls would need to run around the 4 cones with a football at their feet and when one of the coaches blew the whistle they would all have to aim to kick the ball to the centre and knock the ball off the cone. This was so that we could work on aim, body placement and thinking quickly. We extended the drill into a harder variation where they also had to change directions, this would allow them to work on changing directions with the ball at their feet.  After the girls had done the warm-up for 10 minutes I decided to move onto my next drill.

My next drill was a lay off drill. I set up two lines of cones for two groups. Each player was numbered 1-4, every player had their own cone. Player number 1 had to pass to player 2, 2 passed back to 1, then 1 passed to 3, then 3 passed back to 2, 2 passes to 4, 4 passed back to 3, 3 passes it back to 4 and then kicks it back to the front of the line. The point of the exercise is to utilize the first pass. To include different variations of the exercise you turn the cones into defenders so that the players move away in order to avoid the defender so they end up in almost a zig-zag formation. After we had done this drill for 15min we moved onto Chloes last drill.

Chloe, Sam and I with the under 10’s. Photo: Eddie.

Chloe’s drill was based on shooting and using the wing players. The cones were placed in a 4 formation. Each of the players got a chance in goal too due to the fact that our senior girl’s team doesn’t have a goalie.

After Chloe and I had finished our session we ended with a game so that the girls could get playing time. It was very interesting putting ourselves in the place of coaches due to the fact that both Chloe and I had already been playing with these girls, I didn’t know if we had the authority that was needed to coach a session. During our feedback from our coach, he said that we did well in terms of the drill that we had chosen. However, a suggestion that he made was to stop the drill and explain how they would be used in a game scenario so that the girls could understand why they were doing the drill and so we could show what it would look like in a playing context.

Sam and I with the under 10’s. Photo: Eddie.