Ages Six and Seven

At this age, children simply need to be introduced to the game and to have fun e.g. simply  playing with a ball.   There should be no pressure from coaches or parents to have children winning at all costs and a relaxed and friendly atmosphere should be introduced.

To highlight this, we organise a Summer Soccer School for six and seven-year-old children and introduce them to football.   We have a Head of Youth Development who, with assistance from coaches at other age groups, starts the programme off.   He then tries to encourage the parents of the children to come forward and start assisting at the sessions.  This inevitably is how most of us start to get involved with the club.

 Ages Eight to Eleven

   At age eight, we assemble the children into teams for the first time and start to play organised matches.   A full scale match at age eight follows guidelines set down by the SFA and is played as a seven - a - side, on a scaled down pitch using scaled down goalposts and a size 4 football.  There are occasions when the game for younger kids is reduced to four-a-side and we are able to deal with these types of game.   All of our organised games are currently run under the auspices of the West of Scotland Youth Football League and Central Ayrshire Youth Football League.

    Games for children aged eight through to eleven are non-competitive with no league or cup trophies at the end of the season.   This takes the pressure off the children and allows them to enjoy their football without coaches or parents screaming at them to win everything in sight – we believe that at the earlier age-groups, it’s not the winning that matters,  it’s the taking part and the enjoyment of just playing.

    We strongly believe that if the children are taught the rudiments of the game at this early stage, as well as learning how to enjoy playing football, we can teach them to become better players.   As a club, we firmly believe that we must strive to improve the coaching available to children at every age.

Ages Twelve and Beyond.

  At the age of twelve, the children  move to a full sized pitch and play 11-a-side games, using all the Rules of Football, including all the changes that the “big game” has to endure – they are introduced gently to the Offside Rule, pass-backs to the goalkeeper etc. etc. This change to eleven-a-side tends to occur at age 11 (Under 12).

     It is at this stage that the example shown to players really does begin to make an impression and the club is committed to ensure that the players are being given proper guidance on all issues relating to their welfare and not just football coaching.  As a club , we encourage good habits and try to show them how to look after themselves, give nutrition advice, encourage teamwork off the park as well as on, and generally assist in developing them into young adults.

   We aim to have an eleven-a-side team at every age group and, from U13 level onwards, we tend to play under the auspices of the West of Scotland Youth League although in 2006-07 our Under 13 team will play in the new Ayrshire Youth Football Association. It  is testament to the dedication of those involved in maintaining the standards throughout the club that we have managed to have a minimum of 5 age groups operating from U12 level every year since 2000.

 Adult

We currently have no plans to have adult teams as we are very much a Youth Football Club with ambitions to provide a good standard of coaching to Troon youngsters who want to play and enjoy football. We encourage "over-age" players to keep an involvement with the club.