Capital Football Technical Director Talks About The NJC To Be Held In The ACT In April 2010

The Capital Football Technical Director, Ian Shaw provides some excellent information, observations and advice to all concerning the National Junior Championships (NJC) for the Under 13 Girls and Under 13 Boys, to be conducted in Canberra in April 2010. All games will be conducted at the O'Connor Fields. The U13 Girls will play the first three days and then the U13 Boys will play.

This is where you rediscover why you love Football! Its also a chance to get yourself informed of the new directions being implemented around the nation by the FFA, through the new National Curriculum.

Both the ACT teams have been well prepared for the forthcoming Championships.

This Football tournament is a flagship event in the player development cycle for the FFA and State / Territory organisations. There are several points to note:

1. This is all about "development", so if your motivation to attend is based on requiring your team to "win", this is not the event for you - you need to be somewhere else and preferrably a long way away!
2. The teams will play the 1-4-3-3 system, with the midfield three players in the form of a triangle with the apex pointing forward (ie two back one forward) - called "point forward". Get familiar with this system so that you can do some analysis yourself. See posts on this blog for details.
3. There will only be two substitutes allowed each game to ensure tat they assessors get a good look at all players. Each team will play two games a day to enable coaches to play all their players. Its a good format.
4. The FFA Techncial Study Group will make continuous assessments of each team as they play. They will assess players. The FFA Media Relations advise NPL that information to the public on the team based technical assessments, will continue to be limited at this time to the periodic advice during the NJC, on the first three teams' bonus points  standing. It would be good to see more detail available to the football community (particularly community and rep coaches that attend), so that they can also become educated / guided by this essential and innovative emphasis on "development". But its a good first start overall and perhaps more will come.
5. The Coach of each team is also assessed each game. There is a lot of pressure on Coaches in this tournament. Only spectators have the luxury of avoiding scrutiny - worth remembering!
6. Points will be awarded for technical performance, in addition to the ordinary win or draw points from each game. As the ACATAS team discovered in the NTC Challenge, you can come out in front on win/draw points, but loose because you are not judged to be the more technically proficient team.
7. The assessment of technical performance is based on the quality of execution of the FFA's national curriculum. Use this as your start point - to quote (page 16 of the FFA National Curriculum, National Cuuriculum Framework ):

The total STRUCTURE OF FOOTBALL is always the starting point.

The Main Moments of the game are:

1. Ball possession (BP): Building up, attacking and scoring (team tasks).

2. Transition: BP to BPO (team tasks).

3. Ball possession opponent (BPO): Disturbing and defending (team tasks).

4. Transition: BPO to BP (team tasks).

A game of football is a constant repetition of these 4 main moments, each with its characteristic team tasks.

Download the Podcast for this Interview here: