16 players took part today in our first attempt at a goal football blitz.
The game is based on a hurling game on leinster.gaa.ie website called
the circular
game <http://youtu.be/n9hBXMwhjKc>.

The winning team today was Donegal with Conn Rock, Ben McGibney, Shane Reid
and Ben O’Neill. The player of the tournament was Kerryanne Smyth. She
showed great understanding of the game, constantly moving into the scoring
zone and attempted to kick points with both left and right feet.

The set up for the game is a goal in the middle of the field with cones in
a circle around the goal. The radius for the circle is around 11/12m.
Players can score both sides of the goal and the ball is always in play as
there are no sidelines. Today we awarded a point for over the bar, a point
for a block down and 2 points for a superman block down. The radius of the
circle can be increased with older players.

As the ball is always in play, the intensity level is very high. This was
very evident today when we took a break halfway through the blitz and the
players went back into the changing room. There was this unusual sound, it
was complete silence as all player tried to get their energy levels back
for the second batch of games.

My favourite aspect today was watching the players improving as each game
went on. With very little intervention from the coaches they began to
figure out the best position to shoot from and naturally started to drift
into these areas . As mentioned early Kerryanne, in my opinion, grasped
this more than everyone else.

For the first few games we were playing 5 minute per game. We reduced this
to 3 minute for the latter games as the younger players were struggling
with the intensity. If using this game with older players, I think 4
minutes would be sufficient.

I will definitely use this format again for both codes. Any coach
who is interested in using the games and wants a hand setting it up, give
me a call.