Smaller games a hit at Kanga Cup
The under-10 and under-11 divisions are the faster growing areas of the Kanga Cup tournament and this year both those groups are leading the way introducing players to Football Federation Australia’s new structure.
Small-sided games are taking over Australian soccer and the Kanga Cup is leading the way in introducing junior players to Footballer Federation Australia’s new structure.
Small-sided games are an FFA initiative that is designed to give junior players a better introduction into the skills and set-up of the game on a smaller pitch with less players.
Overall the FFA’s small-sided games plan hopes to have juniors up to 11 years of age playing different sized games to the full 11 v 11 on senior-sized pitches. These two different age-groups have had a chance to experience what the new curriculum will look like at this year’s Kanga Cup.
This year all the under-10s and under-11s boys and girls are playing by the official FFA rules, which is seven v seven on a 40 metres x 30m field. The goals and balls are also smaller. In the under11s, they are playing nine v nine on a field that is 60m by 40m.
While almost all clubs around Australia have implemented the small-sided games for competitions up to under-8s as per the FFA guidelines last year, most states in Australia haven’t put in place small-sided games for age-groups above that.
Capital Football’s leagues have been playing the smaller sided games for years, but it is a new structure for almost all of the interstate teams visiting at this year’s Kanga Cup.
But for those that have been trying out the new league, they think it has been a good challenge.
The Queens Park under-11s team that James McKechnie coaches plays 11-a-side on full-pitches up in Sydney, but said he the small-sided game experience would be valuable for his team.
“I don’t think you should be playing on full size pitches until after 12-years-old, sometimes you can see before that age there might be one or two bigger athletic players that just dominate the competition because of their size and their team does well because of that, in the small-sided games it takes that out,” McKechnie said. “The smaller fields and smaller goals, it does make it harder to score, but it’s good to have a different challenge.”
It’s McKechnie’s second Kanga Cup this year after he brought an under-12 Queens Park team to the Canberra tournament. “I’m hoping to bring more teams as well, for under-10s, under-11s, under-12s, it really is a great tournament for them, it’s a great place to come too and it’s well run,” he said.
Brisbane Athletic under-10 boys cup coach Dennis Mulligan around half his team play full-pitch, but the other half play nine-a-side. So to go further down to seven-a-side on even smaller pitches was hard, but Mulligan said it was good to have a challenge.
“I think it’s very good for them to experience different conditions, different fields and the small-sided games,” Mulligan said.
“We do play a very expansive game and use long-balls and we’ve have to condense that and everything with it, but it’s good for something different.
“I can see why they want to adopt a difference approach, there are a lot of players with different size and skill and it’s still quite a difficult game.”