From The Touchline: Building A Squad

I've seen some odd results around in youth soccer leagues this week, no more so than my own. My girls team – which is barely a few months old – has just taken on a goalkeeper and she has made some spectacular saves.

We were playing the team on top of the league (won 5 drawn 0 lost 0 you know the team) at the weekend when she saved a hard hit free-kick with one hand.

She stood with her arms aloft not listening to me or her teammates shouting out to watch out because the ball had fallen at her feet and she had celebrated the save rather than make sure the ball was cleared! The forward on our opponents team said, thank you very much, and slid it home.

Hey, these are little things to work on at training, it was just good to see her making saves and enjoying doing so. We had been playing with the other girls taking turns in goal and it wasn't something they were enjoying doing so this was great for all of us.

We hit the post twice and lost by one goal... quite frustrating but we did play well and everyone went away happy.

More than a team

This was the weekend when the girls were also chosen to be the ball girls for the Women's First Team and so they had that to look forward to. If you haven't seen it on my twitter they went to the match and warmed up with the first team, then they walked out with the players for the match and had their names read out.

This is great for the club and we got some interest from watching spectators about their daughters joining up with my squad for a trial. So at least one of them is coming later this week to training and we will see how she fits in with us all.

It is fantastic how word gets out about the team which we set up at U13 level in the summer, at first we had little response and most of the better players were already taken by other clubs in our area. So it has been heartwarming to see that once we have started to play well and been seen with the First Team there has been interest in joining the team.

Hopefully over the next few weeks we will build a squad that the girls will enjoy being a part of.