Hi Everyone!

I'm volunteering for a local football club and currently coaching a session once a week with a group of kids aged 8 to 11. Ability is pretty mixed across the group which is one challenge and if I'm being honest I struggle a little to manage the practice and some of the players behaviour all at the same time, don't get me wrong I very much like all of the players and appreciate them turning up to my session but on my own keeping their attention is difficult.

last nights session for example I encountered these issues which made it Hard:

- A couple of kids being really slow to join in with the warm up and talking back to me when I asked them to hurry up

- One player refusing to wear a bib

- A fight nearly broke out after a needlessly heavy tackle

- One kid taking a ball during a drinks break and punting it over the fence of the training ground resulting in a long process of retiring it after the session

With all this in mind I still do believe most of our sessions go well and the children often tell me they like me coaching them, maybe it's because I'm a bit of a soft touch and I do really want them to have fun and learn at the sessions, last night I asked one child to sit out the game for 5 minutes for bad behaviour but I'm generally not a fan of making them do push ups or something as a punishment as I know some coaches do. I do feel like they just often turn up after a long day at school and get a bit over excited and I'd always look at what I can do to make the hour run more smoothly.

I've found getting them playing a match after a very quick warm up so they can blow off some steam helpful.

So far any kind of drill just causes them to mess about, I don't want to run a drill were 14 kids are all lined up waiting for their turn as we only have an hour and if I try and split the group down to 3 smaller groups I can't keep an eye on them all at the same time, plus I personally want to use a games based approach with them.

I've been focusing on situations where they are moving the ball for January, I now want to setup games that will help them with their shooting / finishing, can anyone recommend any tweaks I can make to a match to help them focus on this?

Any other advice for running my session would be greatly appreciated too.

Many thanks,

Tom