Equal Game Time in Grassroots Football (or other team sports) — Part 1
I’ve been a coach of a girls football team from U9s through to U13s and in those four seasons, I’ve had two primary goals:
- Keeping smiles on their faces as much as possible.
- Developing their football knowledge/ability.
While I’m an extremely competitive person, my priority to my players is those two points. Winning at all costs is not my job. In the wider context of the women/girls game (and in their lives in general), I have another priority:
- Keep them playing football through their childhood and beyond.
“Happiness comes from playing first and winning second”
Funnily enough, the FA and the club I coach for, Woburn & Wavendon FC, also share these values and the concept of equal game time plays a huge part in addressing the points above. I’m hoping that my story and my struggles to find a good system for equal game time may help others, because there’s no app for this (yet), even though there are some that make that claim.
Why is equal game time hard to implement?
- Football is always seen as a competitive sport (even when some age groups are non-competitive).
- Some people see winning as evidence of happy and developing players.
- Some people come from a generation (as I do) where equal game time was never a consideration.
- Equal game time during a single match cannot work if you only ever play all players in one position each.
- Players changing positions in games can be very confusing for them, even if it’s planned well.
And last but not least, there’s not a lot of help out there. Let’s remedy that.
What’s the answer?
First, there’s no one size fits all solution here. I work in software development, so I’m quite precise about game time and I plan my substitutions in advance. Others prefer to do things more off the cuff and use their judgement during games. Some may prefer to look at game time as a whole season thing, rather than game by game. As long as it works for you and you’re achieving equal game time (or getting close to it), you’re winning and so are your players!
Without one true path to equal game time, the best I can do is tell you about mine and my love/hate relationship with spreadsheets. Yes, I’m one of those coaches (feel free to depart this story in disgust at this point)!
Our progression as a team through four seasons has included three different types of match (5v5, 7v7 & currently 9v9), a variety of different squad sizes and of course match day player availability can fluctuate a lot! All of which has taught me one important point. If you’re going to plan things like I do, don’t do it until the night before the game, then get up early enough on the day of the game to make adjustments if someone is ill, injured or doesn’t fancy the weather. Whatever happens, don’t worry if game time is out of whack for one game (or even two).
To start our plan, we need a simple bit of maths. Given X positions on the pitch and Y minutes in the match, how many total minutes are there to distribute equally?
X * Y = Total Match Minutes
Now here’s where there might be a slight bit of complexity. How many goalkeepers do you have? Do your goalkeepers also play outfield? Do they do that in the same match? Every team is different; and particularly in the girls game, dedicated goalkeepers are like gold dust. I’ve had to cater for varying situations over the years, but as a rule, if I didn’t have a dedicated keeper, I used a different player in goal each half and they played the other half outfield (as a reward).
Thankfully, I do currently have a dedicated keeper in my team, so she plays the full match, which is currently 60 minutes. So given that we play 9-a-side, that means there are only really 8 spaces on the field, so my equation is:
8 x 60 = Total (Outfield) Match Minutes = 480
Now let’s think about match day squad size. Your squad size and mine will vary and in fact they’ll probably vary with every match, unless you’re incredibly fortunate to have everyone show up every week. I currently have a squad of 13 (12 outfield players + 1 GK), which is quite convenient, because this is the next equation:
Total (Outfield) Match Minutes / (Outfield) Squad Players = Minutes per (Outfield) player
Which is:
480 / 12 = Minutes per (Outfield) player = 40
This is about as good as it gets when managing equal game time, because when you bump that squad size up or down by one player, things start to look horrible.
480 / 11 = 43.6363636364
In theory, it’s just another number, but it highlights one really tricky aspect of managing equal game time. When do you make your substitutions and how often? Then going one step further, do you only do direct swaps at substitutions or do you also change positions with other players still on the pitch? What if all your subs are best suited to playing as a striker, but you really need to take off a defender? If you thought things were hard already, now we’re really playing 3D Chess.
It’s now easy to see why many coaches balk at equal game time or just wing it (and some make a damn good job of it!). Planning it is hard, but the benefits can be worth it. The main one of those is player happiness, but the other is that players learn multiple positions; which helps develop their all round game and gives them the experience to truly find out where they enjoy playing most. There’s a reason our children don’t pick their school subjects until they’re teenagers and from my perspective, they shouldn’t pick (or be pushed into) football positions too early too.
All of which isn’t to say that you shouldn’t learn from your players and take their input into your decisions. Likewise, speaking to their parents is insightful too (but when it comes to opinions, coach > player > parent). It’s also important to give players at least a little focus. Playing someone in every position in a single season is likely a step too far and I’d suggest it’s a rare player who both wants to do that or is capable of doing that and being happy.
For me, I ask the players to pick two positions in pre-season and I loosely shape where I play them that season around that, but I’m also flexible enough to change as they develop and as their preferences change. That’s not without its challenges though, as this is a team sport and changing to suit one player has a knock on impact on the rest of the squad. If your CB decides she wants to be a striker, is there someone else who wants to play CB? What about the two players you already have who usually play striker?
Having an idea of where your players want to play, where you feel they contribute most and will develop the most is important to planning equal game time and how you manage your substitutions. Which is where we revisit the example of a squad of 13.
We established that every (outfield) player could in theory get absolutely equal game time of 40 minutes, but the next step is planning that. When do those substitutions need to occur, can you make it so that as few players as possible change positions in a game, do you have a flexible enough squad to do direct substitutions or are you going to need to swap player positions too.
Here’s an example:
You might be looking at that example thinking sod that. You might be be looking at it and thinking hallelujah. I’m not here to tell you the right or wrong way to coach and achieve equal game time, but I hope this example (and more I’ll add in part two) gives you an idea of how you can make it work. Bear in mind that there are simpler and more complex examples, the simplest being when you have no subs; and all of this relies on your players being flexible, which is easier to achieve if you’ve practiced equal game time from day one.
More to come in part two, until then, feel free to get in touch, particularly if you have suggestions on how to handle equal game time yourself. You’ll find me most easily on twitter @wideawakewesley
