No kicking back

Everyone has a ball and no one is passing to anyone else. Edward Rooney reports on changes in grassroots soccer across Auckland this season.
As coach Andrew Cowell calls instructions, the 10-year-olds respond swiftly to the new drill. Each with a ball by their toes, they jog around the fields of Kristin School, effortlessly dribbling around orange cones.
Their immaculate concentration is pleasing to the eye of Kristin United's head of football, Rob Pickstock. He sees it as early evidence of success, with new ways of getting the most out of the game.
"It's about giving the kids as much time with the ball as possible,'' he says. "They need to be utterly and completely familiar with the ball.''
Parents will notice marked differences in football this season as players aged between 4 and 12 use new training and playing methods. It's a pilot of a groundbreaking National Player Development Framework set up in 100 football clubs throughout New Zealand this winter in NZ Football's Whole of Football Plan, with new sponsorship from Persil.
Pickstock says it's probably the end of standing kids in a circle and passing one ball around the group. "You pass a ball to a youngster and tell them to pass it on and they will look at you like: 'Are you kidding me? I just got it'. Now we are saying, 'You keep it'.''
Clubs will also implement a new, standardised, small-sided games model. The plan is staged in three age groups: First Kicks (4-6); Fun Football (7-8); and Mini Football (9-12).
Cowell, 19, has been with clubs in the United Kingdom for five years and says the new approach here is very different to England's. "Over there, they talent-spot at a very early stage and the focus goes into those players,'' he says. "The rest are left to kind of find their own way. I think this is the way up, to be honest, the best chance to get better
as a nation.''
Feedback from pilot clubs will be used to fine-tune the national roll-out of junior programmes to New Zealand's 500 football clubs in 2012, and subsequent launches of youth and senior frameworks in 2014 and 2016, after respective pilots in 2013 and
2015.
It is the first time football in New Zealand has had a  player-development framework providing pathways for all players - regardless of age, ability or motivation - with the aim of retaining participants longer.
Pickstock says parents will notice how much easier the structure of  practices and games are. "It's not complicated. The focus is on enjoyment and retention.''
He says the support of Persil is pivotal to the Junior Framework in the Whole of Football Plan.
"Their involvement makes it possible to encourage kids to 'have a go' at football, to boost registrations and broaden the ever-important entry-level numbers. There is no downside because, even if they don't all go on to become All Whites, they will have benefited from the many positives that team sport and outdoor activity offers. And, of course, they will have a lot of fun.''
Pickstock says we have a long way to go before we are a regular presence on the world football scene, but the hope is to capitalise on the momentum from the All Whites' appearance at the FIFA World Cup in South Africa.
"They say it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something,'' he says, watching the 10-year-olds at their drills, "and here we are at the start.''
Pass it on
For more info on the Whole of Football Plan, have a look at: www.nzfootball.co.nz, or the National Player Development Framework ebook, which is at: www.ebookonline.co.nz/doc/national-player-development-framework