In senior football where players can kick to halfway, pressing on every defender on the goalkicks will usually leave unmarked players behind them that can be found. However in junior football most players don't have the power in the legs to put the ball over the first line of opposition players pressing to the box.

What we see then in junior games is a setpiece opportunity on every goal kick for the team not in possession. By marking every player around the box we see the goalkeepers try to boot the ball beyond their range which most of the time ends up coming back at them as the players are all facing his goal(harder for the defenders to turn.)

Why don't we then, in encouraging playing out for the back, not allow opposition players past a certain point, or a restriction of the number of players in that third, or even all the goalkicks to be taken from the edge of the box? There are a hundred ways which something could be implemented these are just two options, I'm more interested at the moment on whether people would be in favor of the idea.

The obvious argument against is that kids have to problem solve in these situations and changing the rules would just restrict their learning. My thoughts are completely the opposite. My team consistently tries to play out at goalkicks, as the goalkeeper cannot kick very far we have our players very close to him especially the 4 defenders and holding midfielder all spread around the edge of the box. However the opposition just marks these players, so then more of our players come closer to get the ball and what we start to see are odd scenarios in which their are 15 players in our third on the goalkicks.

Now Im not convinced that situation is football and I think changing a minor rule to allow the kids to develop their playing out on goalkicks would be far less detrimental to their development then the current situation they find themselves in on every goalkick.



Edited by tjwhalan: 6/8/2013 07:07:18 PM