Best laid plans... turned out well though!!!

This evening was my first training session since starting the YAM2 course. I was hoping for 12 or 13 of my squad to come as our first league match in the new 9v9 format is this Saturday. Unfortunately a couple of the boys were committed to rugby training so we ended up with 10. I had planned to do the session I talked about in my previous blog but the best laid plans...

So we started off talking about the formation I want them to play on Saturday. We have 12 outfield players signed on so it fits perfectly into a squad rotation. Every player will get 40 minutes of a 60 minute game. 10 of them will play in the same position for the whole game and two will play in two positions. I know we should rotate positions, but as it's a new format I want to get as much consistency as possible. Once I was happy they understood their positions, we discussed how I want them to attack using the wide areas, which should also create some space to attack through the middle. We're really fortunate to have some excellent ball players throughout the team so passing the ball around has always been one of our strongest assets. I talked about how the players should remember the shape of the team and how I wanted the wide players to go wide at certain times and when to tuck in. We then talked about how important it is to drop off and get our shape back when we lose the ball.

After a bit of a warm-up we went straight into a game. I stressed about holding shape, which wasn't easy playing 5 v 5, so myself and Steve decided to be an extra player on each team at the back to allow the boys a bit of freedom. We stopped the game a few times to demonstrate what we had talked about and I also stressed about when to press the ball and when to leave it to them in their own half. There's no point in one player wasting energy by charging in if he does it on his own. The only things to come out of that are tired forwards and a player taken out of the game!!! They picked it up really fast and played some fantastic football. There were a couple of kids that weren't that keen on the work rate, particularly the wide players, but when they saw the benefits they were fine.

I just wish I was going to be there on Saturday...