PLAYERS at the younger end of the age spectrum were given special football coaching sessions with Barrow AFC Community during half-term.

AFC's regular school holiday sessions at Furness College saw a new reception class age-group included, allowing those taking their first steps in the game to have extra time and attention focused on them.

Coaches worked on areas specific to the four and five-year-olds, developing the basics of the game and ensuring they enjoyed more time with the ball, which is often difficult when they play with older participants.

Barrow AFC Community Sports manager Craig Rutherford – who was one of the coaches working with children across the age-groups during half-term, was pleased with the success of the reception age-group venture.

He hopes to see that continue, as well as boosting girls numbers to have a special group for them as well, and said: “It's the first time we have had a reception age group, and that went down really well.

“We didn't quite have enough girls this time to go a girls-only group, so the girls played with the boys – and they did fantastically well. That's certainly something we want to keep trying, to get more girls involved with the programmes.

“The reception children seemed pretty successful and popular, so we'll repeat that as well.”

He added: “Especially with the reception children, we could take them off and play separate matches with them, so they get more touches of the ball and the coach can spend more time with each individual child, so they benefit from that.

“Especially over a five-day period, if they come for the whole week, they get a lot of hands-on coaching time and a lot of time on the ball, which is great.

“With them, it's more down to basic movement and coordination. We theme a lot of games – so we have them pretending to be pirates and such – and there are a lot of games where they have the ball at their feet, stopping it with the bottom of their foot, moving it with their feet. Then we had targets of kicking the ball certain distances and at certain things.

“Children at reception age still can't quite fully rotate their ankles, so it's not a case of going into foot position, it's getting them used to swinging their legs, making contact with the ball and putting different levels of power into it.

“The biggest thing is that they enjoy it, and they like that feeling of the ball down at their feet.”

On the week as a whole, Rutherford said: “It was a brilliant week. Throughout the whole week, we had 50 different children on the programme, which is great for us – it's growing every time we do it. We've just got to encourage more people to come for the week.”

Barrow AFC Community will be running coaching and sports sessions in every week of the school summer holidays. They will alternate between football and multi-sports, with one of the weeks held at AFC's Holker Street home.