The weather had turned decidedly cold for week four of the girls’ academy, and Coach Chris had bought along his new purchase, some target goals, to which the girls wondered how they were going to score!

The session started with the girls working as a 2v1 against Suzy, but they had two target goals to go at, spaced 10 metres apart. They only had 10 seconds to score, with Suzy having to cover both goals. The task looked easy but at first the girls did not go at pace or be direct, hence Suzy was able to cover the centre of the pitch and only closed down when one of the goals was challenged. We coached the girls to keep their distance and width, and to increase the pace they attacked the goals, and then the goals started to come.

We then went to a 2v2 with Chris helping out Suzy in defence. Again this posed the girls a different challenge, they had to be more patient and try to move the defenders about, before being able to create good goal scoring situations. This progressed onto 3v2 and again the girls were coached to keep their distance and move the ball quickly, making the defenders cover more ground and eventually create a good 2v1 or 1v1 situation.

As a final challenge the girls went 5v2 against the coaches. They struggled to play with pace and became very predictable, enabling the defenders to cover the goals with relative ease. The girls realised that switching the ball front to back and side to side quickly gave them a huge advantage.

For the final 10 minutes we played 4v3 with the ‘Youngsters’ against the ‘Oldies’ using the target goals. It was easy to defend the goals deep so the players realised a fast break was needed when they gained possession to stop the defenders getting set. The ‘Oldies’ ran out winners, but only just!

A huge well done to Amber, who as well as playing with a smile on her face, constantly kept trying to attack at pace and take on the final defender.