Quote Originally Posted by sapdad View Post
I am 100% with you on this.The JDL handbook says this is supposed to be hammered into the kids for 4 years (9's to 12's).The shame of it is many coaches would rather get straight to the shuttle runs,gym sessions and winning.Drives me mad seeing kids come into 13s still running around away from their weak foot.Its one of the bigger failures in the whole system.
This is the big issue, so many coaches are focused solely on winning in JDL instead of trying to teach the kids how to play football, as you said there are so many players getting to the youth system who can?t take a touch won?t attempt to use the weaker foot, and think thumping the ball out of defence every chance they get is the right thing. The beauty about JDL is it don?t matter if you concede a goal, allow the kids to try and play out from the back whilst under pressure and teach them it?s ok to take a touch in the back line and control the ball.
Also one thing for me is mums/dads coaching their own kids teams. Whilst i understand coaching numbers are not high and parents coaching is required, if the teams train and play at this same place why can?t they coach another team other wise little Johnny makes the team each year cause his parents are the coach. But then again even if the parents coach another team they become buddies with their kids coach and not enough people have the balls to pit that aside and pick on merit. Until that is fixed we will always have players moving through every age group the potentially should have been moved on earlier.