Here’s a small task for you. Look at the picture. Pick out two things that you would want to avoid when coaching this age group.
There’s obviously more than one team training, there are boys and girls and plenty of players. Also, there are lots of coaches involved. You can see a coach bending down to communicate with a player. They are showing them a pass or catch, which suggests at least an empathetic approach.
Let’s do some maths here. There are five lines of players and I estimate about eight players in each line. So that’s 40 players. I’m guess that’s five balls I can see. Five players are therefore in action. If this activity ran for five minutes, each player would be in action for 40 seconds. In that 40 seconds, they look like they would might make two runs and two passes, plus a handover pass at the end of each run.
Or it could be four passes and four runs? But, for over four minutes, they will be doing nothing. Look at the players at the back of the queue. How are they engaged in the activity?
What are the learning outcomes? Well, we might like them to carry the ball in two hands. Why should they? Well, in this exercise, it makes no sense for a player to do this. They gain no advantage, especially if this is a race.
We might want them to pass the ball. In this exercise, they are passing to a static adult or to a static player in front of them. Whilst the pass to the adult can be accompanied by expert feedback, it’s not very game-like. And passing to a static team mate who they are approaching at speed – we all know how well that often ends.
Now, what was on your list of three things to avoid? Here’s a couple: long lines of players, adults in the exercise, not game-related enough.
My solution would be: One coach per group takes them off into a 10m box with two balls. Split into two teams, and play a 4 v 4 game. Now that game could be “five pass” rugby. It could be touch rugby or tag rugby, but two passes after every tag. It could be a passing race.
Whatever it is, I would hope that the criteria would always be the same: high activity rates, lots of goes, looks a bit like a game and the adults aren’t touching the ball in the game.