Sanfl juniors

Is the “every child gets a half” slogan still in vogue?


I won’t mention the age or club but there’s a couple of lads that get no more than 10 minutes a match, one is my step son who loves his footy, he reads the play well but is timid, when he’s on the field he gets almost to the contest & stops & waits for the crumbs, his skill level is adequate but him being timid is his downfall…….how can these kids grow in confidence when the coach doesn’t show any confidence in them at all, last year they were in the grand final, his team was over 10 goals down at halftime, surely the game is over so why not let them runaround for the second half, my stepson got the last 83 seconds of that match & the other lad got about 3 seconds more

To me it is disgraceful & with my stepson you can see how dejected he is every week

So as I said does the “every kid gets a half” still exist ?

Even some league players tinid to the contest too.

I remembea my lad years ago when he played high school footy.
Usually on q wing or half back flank. He played so wide of the contest at times, you could mistake him being in the line up for a pie at the canteen.

When they played him on the ball he was much more effective as he knew his job was to go and get it and dish it out.

I used to say to him at the time, watch Chris Judd. He uses the ground as a diamond shape and plays in that space to maximise his running involvement.
That worked ok until he ran out of puff and ended up 50m behind the contest.

I saw many coaches at junior footy. Some were good communicators, some good motivators, some just child minders. Happily no head cases who played vicariously through the kids by yelling at them like a lunatic.

Most gave the kids a reasonable run, certainly at school level.
The amateur clubs a bit less so. At those games there were the odd parent who needed to be locked up, but by then the SAAFL had introduced measures to curb the numbskulls.