The AFL’s National Junior Coaching Curriculum is built around broad skill development, not positional specialisation. The whole philosophy at under 12 level is about maximising ball touches and building a complete range of football skills — not locking kids into roles. Most parents don’t know this. And without that context, watching your kid bounce between forward, midfield and back can feel like nothing is being built. It is. It’s just not visible from the boundary.
Here’s what’s actually happening.
Junior AFL — particularly anything under 12 — is explicitly a skill-building phase. The AFL’s curriculum for this age group has one overriding goal: every player should get at least 60 touches of the ball at every training session. Not 60 touches in their position. 60 touches, full stop. That number is in the guidebook.
In that environment, locking a nine-year-old into a specialist position works against the whole point. If your kid plays forward every week, they only ever practise running toward the ball and shooting for goal. They never learn to read play from behind. They never develop the decision-making skills of a midfielder who has to constantly reassess where to be. The curriculum is deliberately structured so kids move through attack, defence, and contest situations — not so they master one of them early.
The AFL’s approach at this level is deliberately broad. They want kids building a complete set of movement skills before the game starts to demand specialisation. That happens around 14–15, when positions become more defined and physical differences between players start to matter.
Under 12, you’re not developing a forward. You’re developing a footballer.
It helps to understand what different areas of the field actually demand — not in terms of elite roles, but in terms of the underlying skills a child is building.
Midfield is the most physically and mentally demanding zone. Kids in the middle have to track where the ball is, where teammates are, and where they should be — all at the same time. Playing midfield builds endurance, decision-making and the habit of reading the game. A child who’s spent a few rounds in the middle tends to start understanding flow — why they should run to a space rather than to the ball.
Forward is where confidence and execution meet. Kids playing forward are practising what to do when they have the ball and a goal in front of them. It’s about movement to create space, leading (running toward where the ball is coming) and finishing. For a child still working on their kicking technique, playing forward gives them the most opportunities to practise their set shots. It also feels good — which matters more than it gets credit for.
Back is the position that teaches reading. A backperson has to understand what’s happening in front of them and react to it. That requires the kind of spatial awareness most kids under 10 are still developing. It’s also one of the quieter positions — fewer direct touches — which can frustrate kids who want to be in the action but builds patience and defensive instinct for those who take to it.
Ruck — the role in the centre bounce where two kids contest for the ball at the start of each quarter — is a specialist role that’s often underappreciated at junior level. It demands timing, body positioning and an understanding of where teammates are positioned to receive the ball. Rotating kids through ruck work, even occasionally, builds awareness that most other positions don’t.
None of these is harder or better than the others. They just develop different things.
Here’s the shift in thinking that changes everything: instead of watching which position your child is playing, watch how they’re playing in each position.
Are they trying to lead — to run into open space — even when they’re in defence? That’s a midfielder’s instinct emerging. Are they talking to teammates? Tracking back when they lose the ball? Choosing their handballs instead of panicking?
These are the things that transfer between positions. And they’re the things that tell you whether your child is actually developing, regardless of where the coach has put them.
A kid who plays twelve games in the same position and does it well has learned one role. A kid who’s rotated through midfield, forward and back and adapts each time — that kid is learning to play football.
This is where it gets practical, and where most parents hit a wall. They know their child is rotating. They can see it. But they can’t tell what’s improving.
Stats help here — not because you need a spreadsheet, but because numbers make invisible things visible. Disposals (every time your child touches the ball, whether kicking or handballing), tackles (when they physically contest for the ball), marks (catches from a kick) — these things happen regardless of position. And when you track them over the season, patterns emerge.
A child who’s developing might have a quiet game in defence where they only had three disposals — but two of them led directly to team goals. A forward who’s improving might start appearing in stats further from the goal as they learn to create opportunities rather than just finish them.
ScorX was designed for exactly this. Parents record their own child’s stats during the game — it takes about thirty seconds per quarter — and over time you get a picture of development that no end-of-season trophy can give you. When your kid rotates to midfield for the first time and suddenly has twelve disposals, you see it. When they play back for the next two rounds and their tackles go up, you see that too.
That’s what “your kid is developing really well” actually looks like when you can see the numbers.
Not according to the AFL’s own development guidelines. Under 12 is explicitly a skill-building phase, and position rotation is recommended to ensure kids develop a complete range of football skills before specialisation becomes appropriate — typically around 14 or 15.
It’s natural to notice that a child shines in one role, but moving them around is still beneficial at this age. A child who’s good in the forward line will become a better forward if they understand how midfielders think and how defenders read play. Exposure to different positions builds the football intelligence that makes them better wherever they end up.
Look for skills that transfer between positions: decision-making, effort at the contest, leading to space, chasing back. Tracking their disposals and tackles across the season — regardless of position — gives you a baseline that doesn’t reset every time they move.
Yes, with the right expectations. You’re not measuring whether they’re good enough — you’re making their development visible to them. A child who can see that their tackles went from two to seven across the season has evidence that they’re improving, which matters enormously for motivation and confidence.
Tell them the truth: “The coach is helping you learn the whole game.” Then watch the quarter with them and point out one thing they did well — regardless of position. That’s what actually sticks.
ScorX is free to download. Track your first game this weekend — it takes about two minutes, and by season’s end you’ll have something real to show your kid.
]]>The question is whether you’re paying attention in the right way.
During a regular season, games are spaced a week apart. You watch, you drive home, you talk about it, you forget the specifics. By the time the next game rolls around, the details have gone soft.
A carnival compresses everything. Your kid plays Friday afternoon, Saturday morning, and Saturday afternoon — sometimes Sunday too. The same patterns show up across all of them, which means they stop looking like coincidences and start looking like actual tendencies.
That kid who goes quiet in the third quarter when they’re down by four goals? You’ll see it across three games instead of one. The handball that comes out under pressure every time instead of the kick? Three games in, you notice it’s not a one-off.
Queensland parents know this well. The winter carnival season, with competitions running through June and July across South East Queensland, Brisbane, and regional centres, puts kids through exactly this kind of concentrated environment. It’s intense. It’s also genuinely useful.
A carnival is a physical ask. Three or four games across a weekend, on potentially unfamiliar grounds, in Queensland winter conditions that feel mild until your kid has run hard four times in two days.
The temptation before a carnival is to ease off — rest up, save the legs. For most junior players, that’s the wrong call. A week of low-to-no activity before a physically demanding weekend doesn’t produce fresh legs. It produces stiff ones.
Keeping the regular training rhythm in the lead-up — their normal sessions, a kick in the park, whatever movement they enjoy — means their body is warm and ready when game one starts. Not overworked. Just not cold.
It’s also worth thinking about sleep in the week before, not just the night before. A kid who has been staying up until midnight on screens and then suddenly needs to compete across a full carnival weekend is asking a lot of themselves. Start winding it back a few days early. It doesn’t have to be a dramatic conversation — just an earlier finish, a quieter night.
The single most valuable thing you can do at a carnival isn’t cheering harder. It’s watching consistently across all the games — not just the big moments, but the small repeated ones.
A few things worth tracking:
Contested work. How does your kid go when there’s a body in front of them? At a carnival, they’ll face different sizes, speeds, and temperaments. The kid who looks great against a slow opponent and disappears against a quick one is telling you something specific about where they’re at.
Decision-making under pressure. Does the ball come out fast and ugly, or do they hold it a beat too long? Three games in two days means you’ll see this choice made dozens of times. Patterns emerge.
How they respond after a mistake. This is the one most parents miss. Not whether they made the error — everyone does — but what happens in the next minute. Do they go looking for the ball, or do they drift to the edge of the play? That response, repeated across a carnival, tells you a lot about where their head is.
What happens in the third quarter. Carnivals are tiring. By game three, everyone’s legs are heavy. How your kid competes when the energy has dropped is a different picture than how they go on fresh legs in round four of a regular season.
You’ll be driving a lot this carnival season. At least one trip per game, probably more if you’re staying overnight for a two-day competition.
The car ride after a game is its own skill set. Too much analysis and they shut down. Too little and they think you weren’t watching.
One question that works across carnival weekends, after almost any result: “What felt different by the last quarter compared to the first?”
It’s open enough that they can answer honestly, specific enough that it’s not just “how do you feel.” And it gets them thinking about the game as something that changed and developed — which is the whole point.
Here’s the honest problem with carnival weekends: by Sunday afternoon, game one is a blur. You remember the big moment from game three and maybe a strong passage from game two, and that’s about it.
If you want the weekend to be genuinely useful for development — not just a good experience — you need to capture something from each game while it’s still fresh.
It doesn’t have to be elaborate. A note on your phone between games: three things you noticed, one thing that surprised you, one thing they did consistently across the game. Three minutes of writing that gives you something real to work with later.
ScorX makes this easier — you can log stats and observations during the game and review them across the whole carnival at the end of the weekend. Seeing the numbers side by side across game one, two, and three is a different kind of clarity than trying to reconstruct it on the drive home Sunday night. But even without an app, the habit of writing something down matters more than the tool you use.
A carnival isn’t a verdict. It’s information.
If your kid looked strong in contested work across all three games, that’s genuinely encouraging — it’s not just one good performance. If they went quiet in the third quarter every single game, that’s worth a gentle conversation with their coach. Not urgent, not alarming. Just: here’s a pattern we noticed across the weekend, is that something you’re seeing too?
Coaches at carnival level are watching a lot of players across a lot of games. A parent who comes to them with a specific observation — not “he didn’t get enough touches” but “she was really strong in the first half but seemed to lose confidence after a turnover in each game’s third quarter” — is giving them something useful.
That’s the difference between watching and developing. The carnival gives you the raw material. You have to decide what to do with it.
Here’s the thing that’s easy to forget when you’re in development mode: your kid is probably going to remember this carnival for reasons that have nothing to do with what happened on the field.
The kids they met from another club. The one from Cairns who had a different way of marking that became a running joke for the whole weekend. The teammate they’d played alongside for two years who suddenly became an actual friend, not just a footy friend, because you spent two nights in the same motel.
That’s not a distraction from development. It is development. The kid who loves being at footy — who wakes up on day two excited rather than just obligated — is the one who keeps playing. Longevity in sport is built on this stuff as much as skill.
Make time for it. If the schedule allows, let them sit with their teammates between games instead of coming to find you. Let the social part happen without you managing it. They know where you are.
And if your kid comes home from a carnival weekend and the first thing they mention isn’t the score but the kid from the Gold Coast who could kick with both feet — that’s a good sign. That’s footy doing what it’s supposed to do.
Carnivals are one of the few times a footy season actually takes you somewhere.
Even if it’s just an hour up the road to Maroochydore or out to Ipswich, there’s something different about a weekend that’s structured around sport. You’ll eat somewhere new, probably stand on an oval you’ve never been to before, and spend more consecutive hours with your kid than a normal school week allows.
Don’t spend all of it analysing the game.
Bring a chair you actually like sitting in. Find the coffee van before it runs out. Meet the parents from the other side of the draw — the ones whose kid your kid’s been talking about for two seasons. Take a photo at half time, not just after the final siren.
In five years, your kid probably won’t remember exactly how many disposals they had in game two. They’ll remember whether the weekend felt good. Whether you were there and relaxed. Whether it was an adventure or just another obligation.
Both things can be true: you pay attention to the development, and you enjoy the carnival. They’re not in competition.
A junior AFL carnival is a competition format where multiple clubs play a series of games over a concentrated period — typically a weekend, sometimes across two days at a central venue. In Queensland, carnivals run through the school term football season and bring together clubs from different regions for age-group competitions.
It varies by age group and competition format, but most junior carnivals involve three to four games across a weekend. Some two-day carnivals may include up to five games depending on the draw.
Focus your sideline energy on effort, not outcomes. Specific encouragement — “great work chasing that back” — lands better than result-based praise. Between games, keep it light. They know when they’ve played well. Your job is to make the gaps between games feel safe, not like a debrief session.
Yes — briefly, and with specifics. Wait until after the event, frame it as an observation rather than a concern, and ask what they’re seeing rather than telling them what to fix. “I noticed she backed off a few contests in the third game — is that something you’ve seen too?” is a conversation. “He’s not getting enough opportunities” is not.
Water, food, and quiet. Most kids need to decompress between games, not analyse. Save the conversation for the drive home. Light movement — a short walk, a stretch — helps more than sitting still. And sleep matters more than most parents expect for a two-day carnival: the difference between a kid who is sharp on day two and one who isn’t is usually the night before.
One of the best. Junior carnivals bring together clubs from across a region — sometimes kids who’ve been playing against each other for years meet properly for the first time. Encourage your kid to talk to players from other teams between games. Those connections are part of what keeps kids coming back to the sport.
Related reading
ScorX is free to download. Track your kid’s first carnival game this weekend and see what three games side by side actually shows you.
]]>Not for the team. For them.
Because most junior athletes will finish this year with a vague sense they got better — or didn’t — based on whether their team won games. That’s a rough way to measure twelve months of effort. And it almost always misses the thing that actually happened.
Here are five development goals worth setting before round one. None of them are on the scoreboard.
Winning is fun. Kicking goals is satisfying. Both of those things are true.
The problem with building a season around them is that kids can’t control either one. A kid who plays well in a losing team feels invisible. A kid who kicks three goals in a scrappy win doesn’t know if they actually improved or just had a lucky afternoon.
Development goals are different. They’re about what they did — the decisions they made, the habits they built, the parts of their game they worked on. Those are things a player can influence regardless of the score, and things that hold up over time.
Coaches think in these terms already. Most junior players don’t. This season is a good time to change that.
A disposal is any time a player kicks or handballs. An effective disposal — in basic junior terms — is one that goes to a teammate or creates something useful. Not every touch has to be perfect, but a player who is consistently hitting teammates under pressure is genuinely improving, regardless of whether their team wins the clearance or not.
A realistic target for a junior player: aim for 70% effective disposals across the season. Early in the year it might be lower. By finals it should be higher. That movement is the story.
You don’t need to track every single one during the game. Even a rough count — “six touches, four good ones” — is enough to see a trend across a season.
This one is almost invisible from the sideline. When the ball gets contested — a mark attempt, a tackle, a loose ball — most players instinctively watch to see what happens. The best junior players move toward the next play before the result is clear.
It’s called contest work rate, and it shows up in things like second-effort tackles, goal assists, and being in position when a loose ball spills.
Set a goal at the start of the season: identify one moment per quarter where your player backed up to a contest when they didn’t have to. That’s four moments per game. By mid-season, see if it’s starting to happen without thinking.
Regardless of position, junior players spend a lot of time in one-on-one situations — a mark contest, a footrace, a defensive spoil. These moments add up, and they’re one of the clearest ways to measure competitive growth.
“I want to compete harder in one-on-ones” is too vague to mean anything. But “I want to win more one-on-one contests than I lose by round ten” is something a player can actually work toward.
This doesn’t require a statistician. It requires a player who starts noticing these moments and a parent or coach who occasionally writes down what they see.
Tackles are one of the most honest statistics in junior footy. You can’t accidentally get a tackle. It requires a decision, a physical effort, and following through even when it would be easier not to.
A player who sets a tackle target — say, three per game — and works toward it is building something that transfers to every level of football they play. It also has nothing to do with talent. It’s entirely about work rate.
The side benefit: coaches notice tackle counts. A kid who doesn’t have elite skill but who consistently tackles hard will get more opportunity, more trust, and more development. That’s worth knowing before the season starts.
The first four goals are about effort and outcome — things that can be tracked across any game. This one is different. It’s about identifying one technical piece of their game to genuinely improve by the end of the season.
It needs to be specific. “Get better at kicking” isn’t a goal. “Nail the drop punt under pressure so the ball doesn’t fade left” is a goal.
The player and their coach (or parent) should agree on this one together. Write it down. Check in on it at the halfway point. It might take until round fifteen before it clicks — or it might click at training week three and they can move to the next thing. The point is that there’s a specific, named thing being worked on.
A kid who finishes the season knowing their drop punt is three steps better has a reason to come back and keep going. That’s worth more than a premiership in the under-11s.
None of these goals require a clipboard and a spreadsheet. But they do require some consistency.
The simplest approach: after each game, spend five minutes on three questions.
That’s it. Five minutes. Done over a season, it builds a picture that tells you far more than the ladder ever will.
If you want something more structured, ScorX lets you track stats like disposals, tackles, and contest numbers directly from your phone during the game. At the end of the season, your kid gets to see the actual arc — not a feeling, but numbers. That tends to hit differently.
The best junior AFL development goals focus on effort and skill, not outcome. Things like effective disposal rate, tackle count, contest work rate, and one-on-one win percentage give players something to improve regardless of whether their team wins or loses.
Sit down before pre-season and agree on two or three things to work on — one technical skill, one effort-based goal like tackles, and one awareness goal like backing up to contests. Write them down, revisit them at the halfway point, and review them honestly at the end of the season.
An effective disposal is any kick or handball that reaches a teammate in a useful position, or creates an advantage for the team. In junior footy, a rough guide is whether the ball found a blue vest or created a scoring opportunity. A good goal for junior players is around 70% of disposals being effective.
Yes, with the right framing. Stats are useful when they show a player how they’re developing over time, not just how they went in one game. A player who can see their tackle count rising across eight rounds has real evidence they’re working harder. That kind of feedback keeps players engaged and motivated.
Look for consistency, not standout moments. A player who is making slightly better decisions each month, who is winning a higher percentage of their one-on-ones, and who is backing up harder to contests is improving — even if the scoreboard doesn’t always show it. Tracking a few simple stats across the season makes that progress visible.
Related reading
If you’ve ever stood on the sideline watching a swarm of eight-year-olds chase the ball like a single organism and thought this doesn’t look anything like the game on TV — you’re right. It’s not supposed to. Junior AFL is deliberately, carefully different. And once you understand why, Saturday mornings start to make a lot more sense.
An eight-year-old playing full-field, 18-a-side football would touch the ball approximately never. The field is too big, the teams are too large, and the game moves too fast for most of the players to be genuinely involved. What you’d get is six kids who love footy and twelve kids who are learning to hate it.
The AFL’s Junior Rules — updated in 2024 and backed by research from Deakin University — fix this by adjusting three things at every age group: the field size, the number of players, and how much physical contact is allowed. When the rules were matched to the age group, individual player involvement increased by more than 35%. More touches, more fun, more reason to come back next season.
There’s also something worth knowing that a lot of parents don’t realise: every player must play a minimum of 50–75% of game time. That’s not a suggestion. It’s a rule. If your child is regularly sitting on the bench for most of the game, that’s worth raising with the coach.
Field: 70m x 50m — players are restricted to their third of the field so nobody chases the ball in a pack
Players: 6-a-side (max 9 per squad)
Game time: 4 x 10-minute quarters
Ball: Size 1 (small, synthetic)
Tackling: None
Scores kept: No
At Under 8, the only thing that matters is contact with the football. Lots of it, as often as possible. The field is tiny. The teams are tiny. Bouncing the ball isn’t allowed. Tackling isn’t allowed. There’s no score, no ladder, and no best-player award.
The coach is actually on the field with the kids. Not on the sideline — on the field.
What to work on at this age:
The very basics. Catching, handballing (pushing the ball off a fist — not throwing), and starting to kick with both feet. Nothing more complicated than that.
The question to ask on the way home isn’t “did you win?” It’s “did you get lots of kicks?” If yes, it was a great game. That’s genuinely the whole measure at this age.
Don’t correct their positioning. Don’t ask whether they stayed in their third. Just celebrate every time they touched the ball.
Field: 85m x 65m — players still restricted to their third of the field
Players: 9-a-side (max 12 per squad)
Game time: 4 x 12-minute quarters
Ball: Size 2 (synthetic)
Tackling: Modified — holding an opponent is allowed, but no pushing, bumping, or stealing the ball from their hands
Scores kept: No
At Under 9, the game starts to look a bit more like football. The oval grows, there are more players, and for the first time your child can be held by an opponent. A mark — catching the ball cleanly on the full, before it bounces — can be taken at any distance, as long as the player shows clear control. One bounce while running is now allowed.
The coach is still on the ground with the players.
What to work on at this age:
Awareness. Looking up before the ball arrives. The kids who develop this early start to look genuinely different from their teammates within a season or two — they always seem to know where to go, because they were already looking.
After the game, instead of talking about what they did with the ball, ask what they noticed. Where were their teammates? Who was free? It plants the right question in their head for next week.
And celebrate the mark. A clean chest mark at this age is a real skill. Make a big deal of it.
Field: 85m x 65m
Players: 12-a-side (max 15 per squad)
Game time: 4 x 12-minute quarters
Ball: Size 2 (synthetic)
Tackling: Modified — same as Under 9
Scores kept: No
Under 10 is where the game starts to feel like football to a parent watching from the boundary. Twelve players a side is a real team. And the coach moves off the field and onto the sideline — the kids are now self-managing out there.
Same tackling rules as Under 9. Still no scores. Still no best player awards.
What to work on at this age:
Where they’re supposed to be. The restriction that keeps players in their third of the field exists for a reason — it stops every single child flooding to the ball and teaches them to hold position and trust that the play will come to them. That is genuinely hard for a ten-year-old. It’s also one of the most important things they’ll learn.
Ask your child to explain where they play and what their job is. If they can tell you, they’re developing game sense. If they can’t yet, that’s fine — they’re ten.
Also: encourage them to kick when they have the option. At this age, many kids handball (push pass) when they should kick because kicking feels riskier. It’s not. Praise the attempt, not just the outcome.
Field: 115m x 75m — noticeably bigger
Players: 12-a-side (max 15 per squad)
Game time: 4 x 15-minute quarters
Ball: Size 3 (synthetic or leather)
Tackling: Modified — holding only, still no bumping or fending off
Scores kept: Yes — but no ladder and no finals
Under 11 is the first real step up. The field jumps in size. Quarters get longer. And the scoreboard goes on — though there’s no competition table and no finals series. The score exists, but it doesn’t count in any formal sense.
Something else changes too: for the first time, a mark — that clean catch — requires a kick of at least 10 metres. At any distance won’t cut it anymore. There’s a standard to reach.
What to work on at this age:
Kicking distance and accuracy. The 10-metre mark rule makes kicking for distance suddenly meaningful. Backyard kicking practice is actually useful now — not just as something to do, but as a skill that will show up directly in games.
The drop punt (where the ball is dropped vertically and kicked before it hits the ground) is the most reliable kick in Australian football. If your child hasn’t locked it in yet, this is the year to do it.
Also: speed of decision. The game is faster than it was at Under 10. The window between receiving the ball and needing to do something with it is shrinking. Talk about what they’re going to do before the ball arrives, not after.
Field: 115m x 75m — same as Under 11
Players: 12-a-side (max 15 per squad)
Game time: 4 x 15-minute quarters
Ball: Size 3 (synthetic or leather)
Tackling: Modified — same as Under 11
Scores kept: Yes — but still no ladder and no finals
Under 12 looks almost identical to Under 11 on paper. Same field. Same team size. Same marking rule. Same modified tackling. But the kids are a year older and physically stronger, and the game moves noticeably faster because of it.
This is the last year before full-contact football. Scores are kept, but the no-ladder, no-finals structure is deliberate — the environment is meant to stay low-stakes while the skills get refined.
What to work on at this age:
Everything. Seriously. This is the year to shore up every fundamental before the game changes completely next year. Kicking on both feet. Handballing on both hands. Taking marks at chest and overhead. Picking up the ball cleanly at ground level under pressure.
If there’s a gap in your child’s game, Under 12 is the right time to work on it. The environment is still forgiving. Next year, it won’t be.
Field: 125m x 95m — bigger again
Players: 15-a-side (max 18 per squad)
Game time: 4 x 15–20-minute quarters (varies by competition)
Ball: Size 4
Tackling: Full — bumping, fending off, smothering all permitted
Scores kept: Yes — ladder and finals apply
Under 13 is where everything changes. The team grows to 15 a side. The field expands significantly. And for the first time, players can go anywhere — no thirds restrictions. Full tackling is permitted. Bumping. Fending off. Stealing the ball from an opponent’s hands. This is recognisable football.
The ladder is real. Finals happen. It counts.
What to work on at this age:
Composure. Being tackled — genuinely grabbed and brought to ground — is a completely different experience from the holding permitted in earlier years. For a lot of kids, the first real tackle is a shock. Talk about what to do before it arrives: move the ball quickly, protect it, know where the handball target is before you receive the ball.
Positional identity also starts to matter properly now. Coaches are thinking about where each player’s strengths are best used. Encourage your child to understand their role and own it — even if it’s not the one they imagined.
The full picture, in one place. Rules apply equally to boys, girls, and mixed competitions at U8 through U12. At U13/14, girls competitions have a smaller maximum squad size (16 vs 18 for boys/mixed) — field and ball sizes are identical.
| Age Group | Players on Field | Max Squad | Field Size (recommended) | Field Size (max) | Ball Size | Quarter Length | Tackling | Mark Distance | Scores Kept | Ladders & Finals | Coach Position |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Under 8 | 6 | 9 | 70m x 50m | 80m x 60m | Size 1 | 4 x 10 min | None | Any distance, reasonable attempt | No | No | On field |
| Under 9 | 9 | 12 | 85m x 65m | 100m x 80m | Size 2 | 4 x 12 min | Modified (holding only) | Any distance, shows control | No | No | On field |
| Under 10 | 12 | 15 | 85m x 65m | 100m x 80m | Size 2 | 4 x 12 min | Modified (holding only) | Any distance, shows control | No | No | Sideline |
| Under 11 | 12 | 15 | 115m x 75m | 130m x 90m | Size 3 | 4 x 15 min | Modified (holding only) | 10m minimum, any player | Yes | No | Sideline |
| Under 12 | 12 | 15 | 115m x 75m | 130m x 90m | Size 3 | 4 x 15 min | Modified (holding only) | 10m minimum, any player | Yes | No | Sideline |
| Under 13/14 (Boys & Mixed) | 15 | 18 | 125m x 95m | 140m x 110m | Size 4 | 4 x 15–20 min | Full | 15m minimum, any player | Yes | Yes | Sideline |
| Under 13/14 (Girls) | 15 | 16 | 125m x 95m | 140m x 110m | Size 4 | 4 x 15–20 min | Full | 15m minimum, any player | Yes | Yes | Sideline |
Notes:
Your child will play a full season of junior footy and at the end of it, you’ll have a vague sense they’ve improved. Maybe they seem more confident. Maybe they get more kicks than they used to. But you won’t really know by how much, and neither will they.
Kids need to see their own progress. Not to feel proud — though that matters too — but because improvement you can’t see doesn’t feel real. A kid who can look back at their first game of the season and compare it to their last one has something to hold onto. Something that belongs to them, separate from whether the team won.
That’s what ScorX tracks. Disposals — every time your child touches the ball, whether kicking or handballing — marks, goals, and tackles, recorded simply from the sideline. Not to build a performance report. To give your kid a story about their own season.
Free to download. You can track your first game this weekend.
Scores are recorded from Under 11 onward. But ladders and finals don’t apply until Under 13 — so at U11 and U12, the scoreboard runs but there’s no competition table and no finals series. The environment is still designed to be low-stakes.
Yes. The AFL supports mixed participation at all junior age groups. Rules are identical for boys, girls, and mixed competitions from U8 through U12. Separate girls competitions typically begin at U13, though local leagues manage this differently — check with your local club.
Modified tackling — where holding an opponent is allowed but bumping and fending off aren’t — is introduced gradually from Under 9. Full contact doesn’t arrive until Under 13, when players’ bodies and game sense are developed enough to handle it safely. It’s a deliberate progression, not an oversight.
When a team builds an unassailable lead — around 60 points — junior leagues are encouraged to apply a mercy rule to prevent blowouts from becoming demoralising. The exact format varies by competition. Senior AFL has no mercy rule.
At U8–U10, disposals — every time they handle the ball, by kick or handball — is all that matters. At U11–U12, add marks and start noticing the split between kicks and handballs. By U13 you can track disposals, marks, tackles, and goals. The goal isn’t the number. It’s having something concrete to look back on at the end of the season.
Related reading
It’s not that kicks, handballs, and goals don’t matter. It’s that at junior and youth level, those numbers mostly reflect game time, team strategy, and where your kid happened to be standing on the day. They don’t show you whether your child is genuinely developing.
The stats below do. And because a forward, midfielder, and defender are doing completely different jobs on the field, the ones worth watching depend on where your child plays — and how old they are.
Find your child’s position and age group in the table below, then read the sections underneath to understand what each stat actually means.
| Stat | Forwards | Midfielders | Backs | Junior (up to U11) | Youth (U12–U17) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pressure Acts | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Primary | Primary |
| Tackles Made | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | Primary | Primary |
| Ground Ball Gets | ✓ | ✓ | Secondary | Primary | |
| Contested Possessions | ✓ | ✓ | Secondary | Primary | |
| Inside 50s | ✓ | ✓ | Primary | ||
| Intercept Marks | ✓ | Youth only | |||
| Contested Marks | ✓ | ✓ | Youth only | ||
| Disposal Efficiency | Not recommended | U16+ only |
Primary = a key development indicator at this level. Secondary = worth watching, but context-dependent. Blank = less relevant for this position.
These two apply no matter where your child plays or how old they are. If you only track two things this season, start here.
Pressure acts cover chasing, tackling, and smothering. They’re the effort stats — and effort is something every kid can control.
Your child can’t control where the ball goes. They can always control whether they chase. A player who racks up pressure acts every week is building the work ethic and defensive awareness that coaches love, at every level from U8 through to open age.
For junior players especially (up to U11), pressure acts are the most reliable development indicator you can track from the sideline. Technique is still developing. Fitness is still building. But the decision to chase — to put the effort in regardless of the scoreboard — that shows real character. And it compounds over seasons.
Five or six pressure acts in a game is a genuinely good contribution. Write it down.
Tackles are visible, exciting, and one of the most meaningful stats across every age group.
A child who tackles consistently has figured out two important things: where the ball carrier is going, and how to commit to the contest. Both are coachable skills. Both take time. And both show up clearly in the numbers when a player is growing.
Going from two tackles a game in Round 1 to four by Round 10 is real development. Celebrate it like a goal.
Once players move into the U12 to U17 range, more position-specific stats become worth tracking. Game structures get more defined. Positions get more distinct. And you can start to see — in the numbers — the difference between a forward who is developing and one who is just getting the ball in space.
A ground ball get is when your child wins a loose ball — in traffic, in a pack, or in a one-on-one scramble on the deck.
For midfielders, this happens in the centre where games are won and lost. For backs, it happens when the ball spills out of a defensive pack and someone needs to be brave enough to get down and claim it.
Players who go for ground balls are developing two things at once: bravery and anticipation. Knowing where the ball is going to land before it gets there — that’s a skill that grows with experience. Watch the trend across a season.
A contested possession is when your child wins the ball with an opponent right there, fighting for the same ball.
For youth-age forwards and midfielders, this is one of the clearest signs that a player is genuinely competing, not just finding space. Winning contested ball under pressure takes courage and competitiveness — qualities that show up in this stat before they show up anywhere else.
At U11 and below, game structures are loose enough that “contested” situations are harder to measure consistently. From U12 upward, look for an upward trend over the course of a season.
An inside 50 is recorded every time a player moves the ball from the midfield into the attacking zone.
For youth midfielders and forwards, this is a football IQ stat. It tells you whether your child is reading the game — knowing when to push, when to carry, when to find the corridor. A player who consistently generates inside 50s is making decisions in real time, not just reacting.
At junior level, inside 50s often happen by accident. From U12 upward, they start to tell a real story.
An intercept mark is when a defender reads where the ball is going, gets there first, and takes the mark before the opposition can react.
It’s one of the best stats you can track for a back — because it measures three things at once. Game awareness (reading the flight and intent of the ball). Decision-making (committing to intercept rather than spoil). And skill (actually holding the mark under pressure).
Here’s what makes it special: you can actually see the moment it’s happening from the sideline. The instant a back commits to the intercept path — before the ball arrives — that’s the skill on display. The mark is just the confirmation.
Start tracking this from U13–U14 onwards, when defensive positioning becomes deliberate enough that intercepts are a genuine read of the player rather than lucky positioning.
Taking a mark under pressure is hard. It needs timing, positioning, aerial courage, and the ability to read the ball in flight — all at the same moment.
For youth key forwards and key defenders, contested marks are one of the clearest indicators of aerial development. An uncontested mark might mean the opposition just broke down. A contested mark means your child won a genuine battle in the air.
Track this from around U13–U14, when aerial contests become a real feature of the game. At younger ages, there simply aren’t enough marking contests per game to draw useful conclusions.
Total disposals are the most-watched number at junior AFL — and the most misleading.
At under-age level, disposals are shaped by position, game plan, and how the game flows. A midfielder in a ball-dominant team might rack up 15 touches. A half-back in a defensive side might get five. Neither number tells you whether that player is actually improving.
Disposals matter. But on their own, they create a distorted picture of development — and sometimes a discouraging one that has nothing to do with your child’s effort or growth.
Goals should be celebrated. But at junior level, they’re one of the stats most likely to flatter or unfairly punish a player based on things well outside their control.
A forward who earns five entries into the forward 50 might kick two goals. Another who earns two entries might kick none. The entry count tells you about midfield performance. The goal count tells you about angles, wind, and a bit of luck.
Enjoy goals. Just don’t use them to measure whether your child is getting better.
Disposal efficiency — the percentage of kicks and handballs that find their target — is a genuinely useful stat. But only for older players.
Under 14s are still developing the core kicking and handballing mechanics that make efficiency a fair measurement. A 55% efficiency rate at U12 might mean your child is brave enough to take the game on under pressure. That’s a good thing. Measuring it harshly at that age does more harm than good.
From U16 upward, it starts to mean something real. If efficiency is climbing over the course of a season, that’s meaningful development worth tracking. Below that age, leave it out of the picture.
You don’t need a professional setup. Most parents can accurately track two or three stats from the sideline with the notes app on their phone or a simple tally.
Pick two stats that match your child’s position and age group from the table above. Track them every game. Look for a trend across four to six rounds — not a reaction to one good or one bad game.
A player who averages one ground ball get per game in Round 1 and four per game by Round 10 has genuinely developed. That number — quiet, unsexy, easy to miss in the moment — is the one that matters.
Stick to pressure acts and tackles. They reflect effort and attitude rather than technique, which is still developing at those ages. They’re also the easiest to track accurately from the sideline — you’ll know one when you see it.
Start with the position they spend the most time in and use that column as your guide. If they genuinely float across multiple roles, pressure acts and tackles are always worth tracking regardless of where they’re playing.
Completely. Game conditions, opponent quality, weather, and game flow all move individual numbers around significantly. One round is noise. Four to six rounds is a trend. That’s what you’re looking for.
Around Under 16s, once players have had enough time to build repeatable kicking and handballing technique. Before that, it’s more useful to notice whether your child is attempting difficult disposals under pressure than whether those disposals find their target.
Two or three is a practical limit if you also want to watch the game. Quality tracking of a few stats across a full season is far more useful than rough tracking of many. Pick your two, be consistent, and the story will emerge.
Related reading
ScorX is free to download. Track your child’s first game this weekend and start seeing their development in the numbers.
]]>Most parents spend the whole game following the ball. Which means most parents miss about eighty percent of what their kid is doing. That gap — between what’s easy to watch and what actually matters for development — is worth closing.
Here’s how to watch a junior AFL game the way someone who understands player development watches it.
This is the single biggest shift you can make as a sideline parent, and it takes about three games before it becomes natural.
When the ball is on the far side of the oval, where is your kid? Are they moving to find space? Working to become an option for a teammate? Or standing still, watching the play, waiting for something to come to them?
The skill coaches call “playing without the ball” is one of the hardest things to develop and one of the first things they look for. A kid who is always scanning, always moving, always trying to get in a useful position is doing something genuinely hard — even if the ball never reaches them.
If your kid does this, they probably don’t know you’ve noticed. Tell them after the game. Specifically. “I saw you keep moving to find space in the second quarter even when you weren’t getting the ball” lands differently than “great effort.”
There’s the obvious stuff — running hard, going in for a tackle. And then there are the effort indicators that don’t make the highlight reel but tell you a lot about where a player is heading.
Chasing after turning the ball over. When your kid gives the ball away and the opposition runs with it, do they chase back or drift off hoping a teammate covers it? A kid who sprints back into the contest after making a mistake is showing something coaches genuinely value — more than the kid who only works hard when things are going well.
Second efforts. After a mark is taken, the ball goes to the ground underneath it. After an opponent marks or receives a kick, someone has to run to close them down. Does your kid do that, or is it always someone else? Second efforts don’t show up in any scoreboard. Development coaches count them constantly.
Body language between plays. Watch your kid’s face and posture after something goes wrong. Do they put their head down? Do they look at the bench? Or do they reset and get into position? Resilience is a skill, and it shows up in body language well before it shows up in results. If your kid resets quickly after a mistake, that’s worth acknowledging.
These are the things worth talking about on the drive home. Not the shot that hit the post.
When your kid receives the ball, there’s a moment before they act — maybe half a second. In that moment they’re supposed to be scanning: where are my teammates, where are the opposition, what’s the right option?
Watch that moment. Did they look up before they got the ball, or were they watching it all the way into their hands? Did they make a quick, clear decision, or hesitate and get caught? When they kicked or handballed, did the option they chose make sense — even if it didn’t come off perfectly?
Decision quality and outcome are different things. A well-weighted kick to a leading teammate who drops it was still a good decision. A goal off a wild kick in the wrong direction was a poor decision that happened to work. Development coaches track the decision, not the result.
Try this one question on the drive home: “What were you thinking when you got the ball in the third quarter?” Not “why didn’t you kick it to so-and-so.” What were you thinking. It shifts the conversation from blame to reflection, and it’s a habit that takes about two games to start feeling natural.
Once you start watching differently, you’ll notice things you want to remember.
Goals are easy to count. But the numbers that track development are disposals — every time a player touches the ball, whether they kick it or handball it — tackles, contested possessions, and how often their disposals lead somewhere useful. These tell you whether your kid is getting involved, competing hard, and making good decisions — not just whether they happened to be nearby when a goal went through.
A lot of parents find that even tracking two or three of these numbers changes what they see. Their kid might not kick goals but consistently tackle more than anyone else. Or they might start the game well and fade in the last quarter — a pattern that was always there but never visible when you were just watching the score.
ScorX is built for exactly this. Parents record stats from the sideline during the game — disposals, tackles, contested ball. Not as a job, but as a way of watching with purpose. By the end of the game you have something real to talk about. Not “you played well” or “tough day.” Something like: you had nine disposals in the first half and four in the second. What changed?
That kind of conversation is where development actually happens. Most kids finish a season with a vague feeling they got better. Seeing it in their own numbers — watching those numbers move across a season — is something else entirely.
You don’t need to track everything. Pick one or two things to pay attention to each game and you’ll come away knowing more than a parent who watched randomly for ninety minutes.
Pick one of these each week. Over a season, you’ll know your child’s game better than you’d expect.
Start with three: disposals (every kick or handball), tackles, and contested possessions (times they won the ball with opponents close). These capture whether your kid is getting involved, competing, and earning the ball under pressure — without needing deep AFL knowledge to count them accurately.
Focus on decisions and effort, not outcomes. “I noticed you kept chasing even when it was hard in the third quarter” is more useful than “you didn’t kick any goals.” Questions work better than statements — ask what they were thinking in a key moment rather than telling them what they should have done.
Yes. The numbers are for your kid’s own development picture, not for the coach’s game plan. Watching their own stats improve across a season — more disposals, more tackles, more efficiency — is motivating in a way that team results can’t replicate, especially in junior footy where team balance varies hugely between clubs.
Look at individual trends, not game results. Is your kid getting more involved as the season goes on? Are their disposals leading somewhere? Are they competing harder for the ball? Development doesn’t always show up in wins and losses — particularly in junior sport, where the gap between clubs at the same age group can be enormous.
You know more than you think. Effort, body language, whether your kid is finding space, how quickly they reset after a mistake — none of that requires tactical knowledge. Start with effort indicators and build from there. The longer you watch with purpose, the more you’ll naturally understand.
Related reading
ScorX is free to download. Track your kid’s disposals, tackles, and contested ball at the next game — you’ll see the season differently.
]]>This guide walks you through exactly that.
Start small. Four stats cover almost everything that matters for a junior player, and all four are easy to spot from the sideline.
Disposals are every kick and handball your child makes. This is the one to nail first. It happens clearly, it ends clearly, and it tells you how much ball they’re getting.
Marks are clean catches. You’ll know one when you see it.
Tackles are when they bring an opponent to ground. This one matters more than people realise. Tackles show effort and pressure, and they almost never make it into a post-game conversation unless you’ve been tracking them.
Goals and behinds are self-explanatory. If your child plays forward, this is the one they’ll ask about on the drive home.
Those four are your starting point. Once they feel natural, you can add contested possessions, clearances, or hit-outs. But don’t try to track everything from game one. You’ll end up watching your phone instead of the game, which is the opposite of what you’re going for.
The trick is to record after the moment, not during it.
Don’t watch your phone waiting to tap something. Watch your child. When they get a disposal, finish watching the play, then tap. The whole thing takes two seconds. Your eyes are back on the game before the next kick lands.
It feels awkward the first game. By the third game, it’s automatic.
One rule that makes a real difference: if you’re not sure, leave it blank. Don’t guess. A scramble in the forward pocket where you think they might have touched it? Let it go. A handball you half-saw through a crowd of kids? Leave it out. Stats you’re not confident in quietly corrupt the picture over time. A gap in the data is honest. A guess isn’t.
You’ll miss some. That’s fine. If you catch 80% of your child’s disposals across a game, you’ve got enough to work with. This isn’t official match statistics. It’s your record of your kid’s game, and it only needs to be good enough to be useful.
Take 30 seconds to look at what you’ve got.
Not to analyse it. Just to see it. Four disposals and two tackles in the first half. One mark. That’s already a picture of how the game is going for your child specifically, not just for the team.
If you’re using ScorX, the summary is right there on your screen. Nothing to add up.
It also gives you something real to say when your child comes off. “Four disposals already, you’re really in the game today” is a different conversation from “good work, keep it up.” Specifics land. Kids remember them.
One game of stats is interesting. Three or four games of stats start to tell a story.
Are they getting more disposals as the season goes on? Are their tackles going up while their disposals stay the same, meaning they’re working hard but not getting the ball as often? Is there a quarter where their numbers consistently drop off?
These are conversations worth having with your child. And if you’ve got something to show a coach, even better. “She had 12 disposals in the last two games” is a lot more useful than “I think she’s been playing really well.”
You’re not building a scouting report. You’re building a record of improvement that your child can actually see. That’s the whole point.
Start with disposals, marks, tackles, and goals or behinds. These four give you a clear picture of involvement and effort without needing specialist knowledge to record them.
Yes. Record after each moment, not during it. Each stat takes a couple of taps and a second of your attention. After a few games, you’ll barely notice you’re doing it.
Absolutely. At younger ages it’s less about performance and more about visibility. Knowing your child took four tackles and had six disposals gives you something real to talk about, and something for them to build on.
Leave it blank. Guessing quietly corrupts your data over time. A gap in the numbers is honest and still useful. A stat you’re not confident about isn’t.
ScorX is designed for exactly this. Free to download, built for parents recording on the sideline, and it covers AFL and 15+ other sports.
Related reading
ScorX is free on the App Store. Track your child’s next game this weekend.
]]>This guide covers the practical fundamentals: how to run training sessions that actually develop your team, how to create an environment where every player wants to show up, how to reduce injury risk, and how to make better decisions on game day — without needing a background in elite sport.
The first mindset shift worth making: your job at junior level is to develop a team that enjoys playing together, improves week to week, and stays intact through the season. The scoreboard is a byproduct of that, not the goal.
This matters because it changes every decision you make. It changes how you handle rotations, how you talk to players who are struggling, and how you respond to a heavy loss. Coaches who chase the scoreboard at junior level tend to make the same mistakes — playing their best players too much, benching struggling players during difficult moments, and training for results rather than skills.
The teams that are well-coached at junior level look different. Kids are engaged at training. Rotations are varied. Players who don’t make the highlight reel still feel like they’re part of something. That environment is what you’re building.
A common trap for new coaches is planning training around what they remember from their own playing days, or what they see on AFL broadcasts. Junior training needs a different structure.
Start with a purpose. Before every session, know what you’re trying to improve. It doesn’t have to be complicated — “we want to work on our handball under pressure” or “we need to clean up our stoppages” is enough. A session without a focus tends to drift into familiar drills that keep players busy without developing anything specific.
Build in game-based activities. Isolated skill drills have their place, but players transfer skills better when they practise in contexts that resemble real games. Modified games, small-sided contests, and situational drills (defending a lead, ball-up at centre, forward 50 entries) are more useful for junior development than repetitive lines of kicking practice.
Vary the difficulty. Good training has moments that feel achievable and moments that stretch players. If every drill is comfortable, players aren’t growing. If every drill is beyond their current level, players disengage. The sweet spot is slightly harder than comfortable — and it’s different for every player in your squad.
End well. The last five minutes of training set the tone for next week. Finish with something players enjoy, a brief word on what went well, and a clear indication of what you’re focusing on in the upcoming game. Players who leave training feeling good about what they did come back.
Junior sport is one of the most significant social environments in a young person’s life. The experience players have during these years shapes whether they stay active for decades or quietly drift away from sport in their teens.
Inclusion at junior coaching level means more than having everyone on the list. It means every player has a genuine role, feels capable of contributing, and is seen by their coach.
Watch who you’re watching. Coaches naturally watch the most skilled players most of the time. Make a conscious effort to direct your attention to players who don’t generate highlights. One specific observation per player per game — even just a mental note — keeps your awareness honest and your feedback meaningful.
Rotate with intention. Rotation is good. Parking the same group of players in low-contest situations every week is not. Vary your rotations deliberately so that every player experiences different parts of the game, including some challenging ones appropriate for their age and ability.
Praise effort, not just outcomes. At junior level, what you praise shapes what players value. A player recognised for chasing hard in a losing position will chase harder next time. A player who only receives feedback when they kick goals learns that goals are all that count. That’s a poor lesson for a ten-year-old — and a poor development environment for your team.
Be mindful of player confidence. Public criticism in front of teammates damages confidence, particularly at younger age groups. Redirect in the moment if needed, but save detailed corrective feedback for one-on-one conversations. A player who feels safe to try — and to fail — develops faster than one who is afraid to make a mistake.
One of the most impactful things a junior coach can do for their team is take injury prevention seriously. Junior athletes are still developing physically. Overuse injuries, muscle strains, and joint problems that start in junior sport can follow players for years.
A proper warm-up routine is the single most accessible injury-prevention tool available to community coaches. The AFL’s Prep to Play program is specifically designed for community football and takes around 15 minutes. It combines dynamic movement, neuromuscular activation, and sport-specific preparation — replacing the traditional “a few laps and some static stretches” routine that most junior teams still use.
Static stretching before activity (holding a stretch for 20–30 seconds) has limited evidence for injury prevention and can temporarily reduce muscle power. Dynamic warm-ups — leg swings, lateral shuffles, controlled lunges, progressive running — prepare the body more effectively for the demands of football.
A simple warm-up structure for junior training:
General movement (3–4 minutes). Light jogging, changing direction, gradually increasing pace. Not a sprint. Not a plod.
Dynamic activation (5–6 minutes). Hip circles, leg swings, lateral movements, arm circles. Get joints moving through their full range.
Football-specific preparation (4–5 minutes). Short kicks, handballs at pace, contested ball work at low intensity. Connect the warm-up to what you’re about to do.
Progressive intensity. The last activity before your main session should feel close to game pace. Players should arrive at the first drill ready to go, not still warming up.
Cool-down matters too. A few minutes of easy movement and light stretching at the end of training supports recovery and reduces soreness — particularly for players who have multiple training and game commitments in a week.
Fitness is often treated as a separate block at the end of training — a few laps, some shuttle runs, then everyone goes home. At junior level, this approach works against you. By the time you get to the fitness component, engagement has dropped, quality is low, and the last thing players associate with training is enjoying themselves.
The better approach is to build fitness through the session rather than bolt it on at the end.
Game-based drills are the most effective tool here. A well-designed small-sided game — say, four versus four in a confined grid with quick transitions — generates more cardiovascular work than a structured running drill, while also practising decision-making, skill execution under fatigue, and communication. Players are working hard without thinking about working hard.
A few practical ways to increase the fitness load inside your existing session structure:
Reduce rest between repetitions. The same kicking or marking drill becomes a fitness activity when the rest period shortens. Start with enough recovery that technique stays intact, then gradually reduce it as the season progresses and fitness improves.
Use transition activities. Between drills, rather than having players stand and wait, use short transition tasks — 20-metre runs to a new position, lateral shuffles across the grid, a sprint to the next cone. These add work without feeling like a fitness test.
Finish with a contested game. A short high-intensity modified game — 10 minutes, small teams, everyone involved — at the end of the main session builds fitness while being the part of training players look forward to most. It’s also where coaches get their best look at how players apply skills under pressure and fatigue.
Match fitness demands to age. Under 10s and Under 12s don’t need structured fitness programs — game-based play provides more than enough. From Under 14s upward, you can begin to introduce more deliberate conditioning, but it should still be largely activity-based rather than running for running’s sake. Kids who associate sport with grinding fitness work are more likely to stop playing.
The goal at junior level is for players to arrive at the end of the season fitter than they started — without any of them being aware that was part of the plan.
Game day for a junior coach is a blur of rotations, in-game adjustments, and sideline conversations with parents. Having a simple system helps.
Know your rotations before you arrive. Don’t figure out your rotation at quarter time. Have a plan going in — which players start where, when you’ll make your first changes, which players you want to give exposure in more demanding positions. Plans change in response to what happens in the game, but starting with a plan stops rotations from becoming reactive and unfair.
Pick one or two things to focus on, and watch for those. If you’ve decided this week is about tackling pressure and handball under contest, watch specifically for those moments. Coaches who try to track everything end up retaining nothing useful. A narrow focus gives you something concrete to reinforce at quarter time and something real to build training around the following week.
Watch the patterns, not just the ball. Your players are already watching the ball. Your job is to see what’s happening away from it — who’s moving into space, who’s dropping off their opponent, where your structure is breaking down. That’s where the useful observations live.
Record what you can, even simply. A tally of tackles, marks, or disposals — even scribbled on your phone between quarters — gives you something to work with beyond memory. It doesn’t need to be comprehensive. Even one or two tracked stats per game starts to show patterns across the season that your instinct alone won’t catch. Which players are doing more than they get credit for. Where the team is improving. What still needs work. Apps like ScorX let parents help with this during the game, which means you can stay focused on coaching while still building a useful record.
Adjust at quarter time, not continuously. Junior players can’t process a constant stream of instructions during the game. Save your key messages for breaks. During the quarter, keep direction short and specific — one clear instruction to one player at a time.
After the game, note three things. Before the week gets away from you, write down three things you want to address at training. What the team did well that’s worth reinforcing. What broke down that’s worth fixing. And one individual moment — positive or developing — for a player who doesn’t often get specific feedback. Those notes take five minutes and make your next training session significantly more purposeful.
Parent communication is one of the least-discussed challenges in junior coaching, and one of the most common sources of stress for new volunteers.
Most difficult parent conversations aren’t really about the thing they say they’re about. “Why isn’t my son getting more time in the forward line?” is usually “I want to know my child is valued and has a future in this sport.” Responding to the surface question rarely helps.
A useful approach: be specific about what you’re working on with their child, not just what position they’re playing or how much game time they’re getting. “I’m working with him on his positioning at stoppages — he’s getting to the ball well but we want him to be in a better spot to use it” is a coaching conversation. It shows you’re paying attention and that there’s a plan. That reassures most parents far more than a general “he’s doing great.”
If you’re tracking any information about your team’s patterns — even informally — it gives you something concrete to reference. Coaches who can point to observed patterns, not just impressions, tend to have more confident conversations on the sideline.
The measure of a well-coached junior team isn’t the premiership count. It’s the number of players who come back next year.
Retention in junior community sport is a genuine problem. Players leave for many reasons — changing interests, school commitments, injuries — but a significant number leave because they stopped feeling like they belonged. They didn’t feel seen by their coach. They didn’t feel like they were improving. They didn’t feel like the environment was for them.
You have more influence over that than any other factor in their sporting life this season.
A team where every player feels included, training sessions have a clear purpose, the warm-up is taken seriously, and game day decisions are thoughtful — that’s a team that stays together. And a team that stays together develops.
That’s the job.
For Under 10s and Under 12s, 60–75 minutes is generally enough. Younger players lose focus and quality drops off sharply beyond this. Under 14s and above can handle 75–90 minutes with a well-structured session. Quality of engagement matters more than time on the field — a sharp 60-minute session is more valuable than a loose 90-minute one.
Prep to Play is a free warm-up program developed by the AFL for community football. It’s designed to reduce injury risk through dynamic movement preparation and neuromuscular activation. Your state or territory football organisation should have resources available, and the AFL’s official coaching development resources include guidance on implementing it at junior level.
Design drills that scale. Modify the same activity for different skill levels — smaller grid for players who need a challenge, larger grid for players who need more time on the ball. Avoid separating players by ability too explicitly, particularly in younger age groups, as it reinforces a hierarchy kids are very aware of. Mixed-ability small-sided games, where skilled players naturally lift less experienced ones, often produce better development outcomes than segregated groups.
Less than you think. Under 12s and younger benefit most from playing, experimenting, and enjoying the game. Heavy tactical instruction at this age can reduce enjoyment and development. From Under 14s upward, you can introduce more structure — positional responsibilities, set plays, defensive systems — but it should still sit on top of a foundation of game sense developed through play. The AFL’s Long Term Athlete Development framework has useful age-appropriate guidance.
Set expectations early — ideally before the season starts. A brief pre-season note or meeting that explains your coaching philosophy (development focus, varied rotations, effort over outcome) manages most sideline tension before it starts. When difficult conversations happen, listen first, acknowledge the concern, and respond with specifics about what you’re working on. Coaches who communicate frequently and specifically tend to have fewer difficult parent interactions, not more.
You don’t have to track everything — and trying to do so while coaching usually means doing neither well. The more useful approach is to pick one or two things to track per game, connected to whatever your current training focus is. If you’ve been working on tackling pressure, count tackles. If you’re developing ball movement, track disposals by zone. Even simple tallies build a picture across the season that memory alone won’t give you. Enlisting a parent to help with recording during the game — using a phone or a simple stats app — means you can stay focused on coaching while still capturing something useful.
Related reading
ScorX is free for coaches. It’s designed for exactly the kind of community coaching described in this guide — track what you’re seeing across the season, build a picture of your team’s patterns, and have something concrete to say at training and on the sideline. Download on the App Store.
]]>This guide is for every parent standing on the sideline trying to figure out what “good development” actually looks like, what you should be saying after the game, and how to support your kid without accidentally getting in the way. It covers the full journey from Auskick through to U18s.
Development in junior AFL isn’t about winning. It’s not even really about stats, at least not early on.
At its core, development means a child is growing as a footballer and an athlete over time — learning new skills, making better decisions under pressure, and building the physical foundations they’ll need as the game gets faster and more demanding.
For parents new to AFL, the easiest way to think about it is this: the goal of every age group is to prepare your child for the next one. A great Under 10 season isn’t measured by goals kicked. It’s measured by whether your child is more comfortable with the ball, more willing to contest, and more in love with the game than they were twelve months ago.
The AFL’s own junior rules are designed around one key insight: kids can’t process the game the same way adults can, so the game needs to adapt to them, not the other way around.
Understanding how the game changes across age groups helps you know what to look for — and what to be patient about.
Under 8s and Under 10s are about exposure. The focus is on having fun, touching the ball as much as possible, and developing basic movement skills. Don’t worry about positioning. Don’t worry about kicking technique being perfect. The job at this stage is to fall in love with the game.
Under 12s and Under 14s are where the game starts to take shape. Players learn positions, begin to understand team roles, and develop sport-specific skills like marking, handballing under pressure, and reading where the play is going. This is also the age group where physical differences between kids become most visible — and most misleading.
Under 16s and Under 18s are where athleticism and skill start to matter equally. The pace of the game increases significantly. Decision-making under fatigue becomes a real test. This is the age group where kids who developed strong fundamentals early begin to separate from those who relied on size and physicality.
If you’re new to AFL, one of the most disorienting things is that the game your child plays at U9 looks almost nothing like the game they’ll play at U16 — and that’s completely by design. The AFL has built a progressive framework where the rules, ground size, team numbers, and physicality all scale with the kids playing.
Here’s what to expect at each stage, drawn from the AFL’s official Junior Rules handbook.
Under 8s — 6-a-side, 70m x 50m ground, no tackling, no scores
This is the gentlest possible introduction to the game. Teams of six play on a tiny oval — about the size of two basketball courts side by side — divided into three equal zones. There’s no tackling at all, no scoreboard, and no bouncing the ball while running. A coach is allowed on the field to guide players during play. No best-and-fairest, no goal kicker awards. The entire focus is on getting kids comfortable with the ball in their hands.
Under 9s — 9-a-side, 85m x 65m ground, modified tackling begins
The oval grows, the team size grows, and for the first time kids can hold an opponent — but only with a “wrap tackle,” not a full tackle with bumping or smothering. Coaches move to the sideline. Still no scores, no ladders. One bounce permitted while running. The zones remain, keeping kids spread across the ground so everyone stays involved.
Under 10s — 12-a-side, 85m x 65m ground, modified tackling continues
Same ground size as U9 but bigger teams. The modified tackling rules still apply — no pushing, bumping, or smothering. Still no scores published. Coaches remain on the sideline. This is the last age group before the game starts opening up physically, so the focus remains firmly on skill repetition in a safe environment.
Under 11s — 12-a-side, 115m x 75m ground, full tackling introduced
This is a significant jump. The oval nearly doubles in length, and for the first time kids can tackle fully — including bumping, fending off, and smothering. The marking rule also changes: a mark is now only awarded when the ball travels at least 10 metres and is caught directly (not just controlled). Scores may be kept at the controlling body’s discretion, but there’s still no requirement for it at this age.
Under 12s — 12-a-side, 115m x 75m ground, full tackling, scores optional
Same setup as U11. Whether scores and ladders are published is up to the local league. Many competitions at this age still choose not to keep scores, prioritising development over results.
Under 13s and 14s — 15-a-side, 125m x 95m ground, full game
This is the first age group that looks meaningfully like senior football. Full tackling and all physical contact rules apply. The marking distance increases to 15 metres. Scores, premiership points, and ladders are now standard. The game also shifts to a leather ball — heavier and harder to control in the wet. Unlimited bounces are permitted. This transition catches a lot of kids (and parents) off guard, because the game suddenly feels much more intense.
Under 15s — 15-a-side (up to 18 on bench), 130m x 100m ground
A slightly larger ground again. Boys play with a size 5 leather ball — the full senior ball. Girls play with a size 4. The pace and intensity at this level is noticeably higher, and athleticism starts to separate players in a way it simply doesn’t at younger ages.
Under 16s to 18s — 18-a-side (boys), 16-a-side (girls), full ground
This is the full game. Full-sized oval, full-sized ball, full contact, full rules. Boys’ teams can field up to 18 players, girls’ up to 16. This is where the game your child has been building toward for a decade finally arrives.
One rule that applies at every single age group: every player must have a minimum of 50–75% game time. This isn’t optional — it’s a formal requirement. If your child is sitting on the bench for more than a quarter of the game on a regular basis, that’s worth raising with the coach.
A note on zones
You’ll notice the younger age groups use zones — the field is divided into thirds, and players are assigned to stay within their zone. For new parents, this can look like kids standing around doing nothing. It’s actually the opposite. Zones prevent the “swarm ball” effect where every child chases the ball into a tight pack and most kids never touch it. Zones keep the game spread out, guarantee every player gets opportunities, and force kids to learn positioning rather than just following the ball. They disappear entirely at U13/14, by which point players should have developed the football sense to find space on their own.
This is one of the most common and least talked-about experiences in junior sport, and it can be genuinely confronting for families.
A child who is physically bigger or faster than their peers can look exceptional in the younger age groups. They win contests through strength. They get to the ball first. They kick goals from positions that smaller kids can’t reach. Their stats look outstanding.
Then they move up a grade — or their teammates catch up physically — and suddenly the size advantage disappears. Now the game requires skill, reading of play, and athletic foundation. And if those things weren’t being developed while the physical advantage was doing the heavy lifting, the transition can be tough.
This isn’t failure. It’s a completely normal and well-documented pattern in junior sport. The most important thing a parent can do in those lower age groups is resist the temptation to celebrate the physical wins and instead pay attention to the skill development happening underneath. Is your child’s kicking technique improving? Are they making good decisions when they receive the ball? Are they finding ways to contribute when they’re not the biggest person on the field?
Those are the questions that predict long-term development. Scoreboard performance at U12 is a very poor predictor of who thrives at U16.
Researchers who study youth sport have asked hundreds of kids what they most want to hear from their parents after a game. The answer, overwhelmingly, is this:
“I love watching you play.”
That’s it. Full stop.
Not “you should have kicked that” or “why didn’t you run to the square?” Not even “you played great.” Just the simple, unconditional message that their parent enjoys being there.
It sounds almost too simple. But kids — especially in the U10s to U14s age range — are acutely sensitive to parental approval, and they carry the weight of perceived disappointment onto the training track with them. A child who expects to be critiqued after the game plays defensively during it. They make safer, smaller decisions. They avoid risk. All of which are the opposite of the behaviours that build a developing footballer.
This doesn’t mean pretending a tough game didn’t happen. It means your child’s coach will handle the debrief. Your job on the way home is to make them feel safe, loved, and glad they played.
Volunteer coaches in junior AFL are doing one of the most valuable and underappreciated jobs in Australian community sport. Most of them are parents themselves. They’ve done the accreditation, they’ve planned the sessions, and they have a development plan for your child that you might not be fully across.
One of the most common — and entirely well-intentioned — mistakes parents make is giving kids feedback that contradicts what the coach is working on.
Here’s a concrete example: your child’s coach has been working on their lead-up patterns for three weeks. They want your child to hold their lead until the last moment, then burst to the ball. You watch the game, see your child not getting free, and tell them afterwards to lead earlier. Your child now has two different instructions in their head, from two people they trust, and the result is hesitation when they need confidence.
The fix is easy: talk to the coach. Not to question their approach, but to understand it. A quick two-minute conversation at training — “what are you working on with her this month?” — gives you the information you need to reinforce rather than contradict. Coaches love parents who are aligned with the team’s development direction. It makes their job easier and your child’s progress faster.
If you disagree with something the coach is doing, raise it privately and respectfully. Never on the sideline. Never in front of your child.
Once you’ve decided to step back from coaching your kid, you get to do something much more enjoyable: just watch them play.
But if you want to watch with a development lens rather than just tracking the score, here’s what to pay attention to:
Effort in the contest. Is your child willing to put their body in? This is more important than the outcome of the contest, especially in younger age groups.
Decision-making with the ball. When they receive possession, do they take a moment to look for the best option? Or do they panic and kick blindly? Good decision-making is a skill that improves with practice, and you can see it developing from game to game.
Positioning without the ball. Where is your child when the ball is 40 metres away? Are they in a position to receive a kick, or have they lost interest in the play? This is often the most revealing indicator of football IQ in younger players.
Reaction to mistakes. How does your child respond after dropping a mark or kicking it out of bounds? Do they reset quickly, or do they carry the error into the next contest? Resilience under pressure is a key development milestone.
None of these things show up in the final score. All of them tell you something real about how your child is growing.
Junior AFL development is a slow process. It’s supposed to be. The players who come through community clubs and develop into capable senior footballers are almost never the kids who dominated at U10. They’re the ones whose parents stayed patient through the plateaus, supported them through the grade transitions, and kept the experience positive enough that they wanted to keep coming back.
Your child doesn’t need you to be their second coach. They have one of those. They need you to be their biggest fan — the person who makes the car ride home feel safe no matter what the scoreboard said.
If you want to channel your natural desire to understand your child’s development, tracking their game-by-game progress is a genuinely useful thing. Watching how their disposal efficiency changes across a season, or how their contest work rate builds through the year, gives you real data to celebrate — and takes the pressure off interpreting every single performance in isolation.
There’s no rush. Most sports scientists recommend staying multi-sport until at least 12-14 years old, and the AFL’s own junior framework is built around enjoyment and skill variety, not early specialisation. Kids who play multiple sports in their early years often develop better athleticism and decision-making than those who specialise too early.
Yes, very. The U12 to U14 transition is one of the toughest in junior AFL because the physical advantages of the younger age groups start to even out, and the game demands more skill and tactical awareness. This is the stage where development that happened in the background becomes most visible. Give it a season before drawing any conclusions.
Always privately, and always framed as curiosity rather than criticism. “I’d love to understand what you’re working on with him this season” opens a very different conversation than “why doesn’t she get more game time?” Most volunteer coaches welcome engaged parents — they just need to feel respected, not interrogated.
Performance is how your child goes in a single game. Development is how they go across a season, a year, or a career. A child can perform well in a game without developing (big kid dominating through size) and develop significantly across a season without a standout performance. Development is the slower, more important measure.
Look for patterns across multiple games rather than individual performances. Are they making quicker decisions under pressure than they were three months ago? Are they attempting skills they weren’t confident with earlier in the season? Are they enjoying training? Consistent engagement and gradual skill progression are the most reliable signs of real development.
Related reading
If you want a way to track your child’s development across a season, ScorX is free to download. It records game statistics across 16 sports — including AFL — and helps you see your child’s progress over time, not just from one Saturday to the next.
]]>Speed isn’t just a physical quality. In team sports, it’s a participation multiplier.
Watch a junior game closely and you’ll see it happen over and over. A ball spills loose and two players chase it. One arrives first. The other doesn’t get a touch. Over the course of a game, that half-step difference decides who gets involved and who watches from the edge of the play.
It’s not about fitness. Both kids might be equally willing. The difference is acceleration — the ability to generate pace quickly over a short distance.
For young athletes still developing, this gap is frustrating. They’re trying hard. They want the ball. But they keep arriving a moment too late. Over time, that can quietly chip away at their confidence and their connection to the game.
The good news: acceleration is one of the most trainable physical qualities in junior sport. Kids who work on it consistently get genuinely faster — and the change shows up in real games.
Most parents think of speed as how fast a child can run flat out. But in team sports — AFL, netball, football, basketball, rugby — very few game actions involve a long, open sprint.
The contests that decide games happen in tight spaces. A player reads the play, makes a decision, and explodes into a five or ten metre burst. It’s that first two or three steps — not top-end pace — that win the loose ball, create the space, or close down the opponent.
That kind of speed is called acceleration. And compared to pure top-end velocity (which has a bigger genetic component), first-step quickness responds quickly to deliberate training. Athletes who haven’t naturally developed it yet can close the gap significantly over a single season.
Speed development in junior sport doesn’t require a track coach or specialised equipment. The basics work.
Short, explosive efforts. The drills that build game-relevant acceleration are short — five, ten, twenty metres at most. Long runs build fitness, but they don’t teach the nervous system to fire quickly. Sprint drills that are genuinely explosive, with full recovery between efforts, are what moves the needle.
Strength as a foundation. Faster athletes tend to be stronger athletes. Bodyweight exercises — squats, lunges, single-leg work — build the leg power that translates directly into a harder first step. You don’t need a gym. Consistent bodyweight strength work at training age is one of the highest-leverage things a young athlete can do.
Rest between efforts. This is the one coaches get pushback on from players. Sprint drills are not cardio sessions. Full recovery between repetitions — longer than feels comfortable — is what allows each effort to be genuinely explosive. Tired sprints train endurance, not speed.
Consistency over blocks. A single intense training session won’t produce a faster athlete. But two or three sessions a week, across a season, with genuine effort on each rep, produces measurable change. Speed development is patient work.
This is the part most junior programs miss entirely.
Athletes do the drills. Coaches run the sessions. But without tracking times, progress is invisible. A child might be genuinely faster than they were eight weeks ago and have no idea. Neither does their parent.
Timed sprint drills — the same distance, consistently recorded — tell the story that effort alone can’t. When a young athlete can see their five-metre time drop from 1.24 seconds to 1.09 seconds over a season, that’s not abstract. That’s proof. It’s the kind of evidence that keeps a kid motivated to keep working, and gives a parent something concrete to celebrate beyond “you tried hard today.”
ScorX includes run drill timers built for exactly this — recording efforts at training so athletes can track their progress across a season, not just guess at it.
One honest note: faster drill times don’t automatically guarantee more game time. Game involvement also depends on skills, decision-making, reading the play. But an athlete who is measurably quicker off the mark has removed one of the barriers. They’re arriving at contests. What they do next is up to them.
Realistic expectations matter here. Young athletes won’t transform into elite sprinters in twelve weeks. But the gains that come from consistent, focused speed work are meaningful at community sport level.
Fractions of a second change outcomes. An athlete who shaves 0.15 seconds off their acceleration over ten metres isn’t just a statistic improvement — they’re arriving at contests they were previously losing. They’re getting touches they weren’t getting. They’re involved.
That visible change — felt by the athlete and seen by their parent from the sideline — is what builds the kind of confidence that compounds over a career. Not just in speed. In the game itself.
Speed is trainable. Tracking it makes the training real.
Acceleration and agility work is appropriate from around eight or nine years old, as long as the focus is on fun, short efforts with plenty of rest. Formal strength training is generally introduced in early adolescence. The key at younger ages is movement quality over intensity.
Two dedicated sessions per week is a good starting point, with full recovery between efforts in each session. More than three speed sessions per week without adequate recovery can work against development.
Five and ten metre sprints capture acceleration — the game-relevant quality. Twenty metres can also be useful for slightly older athletes. Anything longer starts measuring top-end speed rather than the first-step quickness that matters most in team sports.
Most athletes who train consistently see measurable improvement within six to eight weeks. The gains early in a program tend to be the largest — technique improvements alone can produce noticeable time drops before fitness adaptations even kick in.
Yes. The acceleration qualities that matter in AFL — first-step quickness, change of direction, short-burst speed — are directly transferable to netball, basketball, football, and rugby. The specific distances and game contexts differ, but the underlying physical quality is the same.
Related reading
ScorX is free to download. Start recording your athlete’s sprint times at training and track their progress across the season.
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