It’s the most wonderful time of the year…

A new season is set to get underway, so we grabbed a few of our coaches and asked them how they see the forthcoming campaign panning out for their teams.

Stu Hart manages our Tornados under-eights side, Alex Morris coaches Cheetah’s under-12s girls, Dan James manages Sharks and Rockets under-sevens and Mark Jones leads Diamonds under-11s girls.

Stu Tornados: Positive. We have managed to keep all of our original squad bar one player. We have finally found the needle in the haystack of a goalkeeper in the form of Tilly who moved to us after the Jackals girls team folded last season. She’s fitted in with the boys really well. We entered the MYSL tournament last week. We drew two games and lost two, so didn’t progress but it was great to get some game time under our belts. We feel we’re ready to hit the floor running this Saturday.

Alex Cheetahs: We’ve been slow to get back at it after a cramming session towards the end of the last season (we all felt the burden of catch up after a lousy winter). Two training sessions in and one game and it’s clear we’ve got some work to do but we are all totally ready to take that on.

Mark Diamonds: Pre-season has been quite hard as I’ve got a team full of globetrotters so we’ve been very light on numbers so it has been difficult to do anything of real substance.

Dan Rockets and Sharks: It was a mixed bag. We struggled to get friendlies and minutes in the legs, so are going into the season slightly underprepared. However, we have developed two excellent squads and we are all really looking forward to the season starting.

Stu Tornados: We hope to continue to develop our all-round game. This season sees us move up to six-a-side, so things will be different to the last 18 months, but I’m sure our lot will relish in this. We did really well in all cup comps last year, but fell at the final hurdle in the champions final, so hopefully we can go one step further this time round.

Alex Cheetahs: Maintain the interest in the game for our girls and to welcome in two or three more in preparation for moving to 11 a side. We’ve introduced a development strategy for each player this season, we will be documenting what they want to achieve and what areas they want to see growth so that we can integrate this into our training. I’d love to get to season end and see that they have all achieved their own goals with our help and support. I’m also hoping for a dryer winter so that we can actually play our games.

Mark Diamonds: It’ll be difficult but we’d like to match or even surpass last season’s achievements when we excelled in a tough division with a lot of teams who have players linked to league clubs. We are stepping up to nine-aside this time so the girls are learning new formations and no longer have the ‘retreat rule’ [when players must get back to halfway when the opposing team has a goalkick]. Also we may be trialling the blatant offside rule, which will be a challenge.

Dan Rockets and Sharks (pictured, above): As long as the kids enjoy the season, building on their experiences and learning as they go, we will all be happy. 

Stu Tornados: HAPPY PLAYERS, HAPPY PARENTS ALWAYS

Alex Cheetahs: One with games actually played (joking…) Clean sheets and goals galore.

Mark Diamonds: For everyone to enjoy it.

Dan Rockets and Sharks: Enjoyment and development [we didn’t have the heart to point out to Dan that he was two words shy of answering accurately…] 

Good luck to all our teams - we hope everyone has a great start to the season and above all else - enjoys themselves.