The FA’s Pete Sturgess adds to his first blog series which is designed to help people who are taking their first steps as a coach with players aged 5-11. Here he looks at the importance of play.

Starting out on your coaching journey can be a daunting experience and although I would consider myself an experienced coach now, I can still remember, with lots of trepidation, those first encounters with groups of young children and the prying eyes of the parents as they watched the sessions.

My biggest fear was running out of activities during the hour-long session. I was also very conscious of what the parents thought (surely, they all knew so much more than I did) but most worrying of all; the children were at different ability levels and all had their own special characteristics, needs and wants. How was I ever going to survive?

The thing that got me through was making sure the sessions were fun, engaging and appropriate for the young children in front of me.

When working with young children your football knowledge and experience must take a back seat. You have to create a safe, secure and caring environment before any kind of effective learning can take place. Building a good relationship with each child is necessary before they can benefit from anything that you know about football.

One thing to remember is that children have a very strong in-built driver called the seeking system. The seeking system is engaged best when children play and it’s a system that promotes curiosity, exploration and experimentation.

We’re so fortunate to be working with the children during this special time in their development because we can help them become more self-directed, goal orientated and motivated to discover new things.

Relating this to our role as a football coach, we want the children to be motivated to improve their skills and to eventually become those independent decision-makers and problem solvers that shine out in a game. It’s a long journey but one that starts with a basic understanding of the importance of play and the empowerment of children.

“Can we have a game now?”, is a cry we have all heard. The coach of young children should celebrate when they hear this as it comes from children who are eager to play and motivated to be involved – don’t we all need this reaction from our teams?

Insisting that you take them through the latest session you have downloaded from the internet or using the chance of a game as the way to get your group to behave better is not what this situation calls for.

The coach should have already planned for this question, and, if possible, have the small-number games already set up so that the players can start playing straight away.

It’s important to realise that this is not poor coaching! It’s a perfectly acceptable introduction to football for young children.

So instead of parents seeing this as the coach being lazy, not having time to prepare the session or not having a clue, they should be celebrating the fact that their most prized possessions are working with someone who understands children and someone that will be challenging them to get better and improve in an age appropriate way.

Next time: using small-number games during your sessions.

To help anyone who wants to get involved in supporting opportunities for young children, The FA Playmaker course is the perfect start and I would highly recommend this to aspiring coaches, volunteers and helpers.

The course is free, online, user friendly and is designed to give the participants greater confidence and a deeper understanding of children and their development through sport.