Four wins in fourteen last season, and the squad kept all nineteen players. Both of those facts have the same cause.
Our under twelve squad won four of fourteen games last season. I want to explain why, because a parent asked me in November whether we were actually trying.
We were. We were trying to win in a way that still has nineteen children in it at fifteen.
Three rules cost us games last year. Every child plays at least half of every fixture. Every child plays in at least three positions across the season. No child is played out of their age group to win a match.
The first rule is obvious enough that most clubs claim it and fewer keep it. Keeping it in a tight game is the test. We have had an eleven year old on the pitch in the last ten minutes of a game we might have won with somebody else out there, and that child is still playing football two years later, and several of the children who were on the bench at their old club are not.
The second rule is the one that gets us strange looks. Why move a good centre back into midfield in the middle of a season? Because a twelve year old who has only ever played at the back has no idea what a defender can see, what a midfielder is looking for, or where they will actually be best at sixteen. Two of our best passers now started the season as defenders. Neither of them would have discovered that in a squad organised to win in October.
The third rule is the one I feel strongest about. Playing a talented eleven year old in the under thirteen fixtures because it wins the game does three things: it tells the eleven year old that their value is the result, it takes a game away from a thirteen year old who needed it, and it risks a child physically against bodies two years ahead of theirs. We will move a child up when they are ready for the training, which is a different question and one the coaches answer together over weeks, not on a Friday because somebody is injured.
What happened by the end of last season is the part worth knowing. We kept all nineteen players, which very rarely survives a losing first season. Four children changed position permanently. And in the last four games we won three, beating two squads who had beaten us earlier with the same players.
None of this means results do not matter. Children want to win and pretending otherwise is condescending. It means the scoreboard is not the only thing being measured, and at eleven it is one of the less useful things being measured.
If what you want for your child is a squad that picks its best eleven and wins, that is a reasonable thing to want and there are clubs here that do it well. Ask us and we will tell you which ones.
