Hi

I'm hoping you can help settle my mind on the rules / recommendations around match sizes for younger age groups, as I am often seeing discrepancies between what the welfare team aty club suggests, and what I see when we play games.

For example, at U8, the line from our welfare team is that there is a fixed rule of maximum match sizes of 5v5. However, when we play other teams in our league, it is not uncommon for teams to request to play at 6 or 7 aside. Furthermore our neighbouring league runs as 7 aside, and several of the kids tournaments / galas in our area over the summer run at 6 aside. Are all these clubs breaking the rules (in which case, why is nothing being done about it?) or is our welfare team's interpretation of the rules wrong.

I understand and support the idea of playing smaller games wherever possible. But there are some occasional circumstances where letting our kids play a game at 6 aside might be beneficial (e.g. lack of coaches, lack of equipment, to allow us to enter 6 aside tournaments, etc).

What is the guidance here, is 5 aside recommendation, or is it a hard rule?