Sorry to hear about the drubbing. It does leave plenty of room for improvement.

Try only a single striker up front, one in central midfield and three at the back where your two fittest players play as left and right back.

However, you allow only one of the wing backs to move up the park at a time according to where the ball is.

This gives you three players forward and two players at the back when attacking and one forward player and 4 players at the back when defending.

The result is that you conserve energy and score on the break. It is similar to how Germany have played in the World Cup when they scored a couple goals in each game in the earlier rounds with fast breaks from defence.

Let me know how you get on

Russell

Many Thanks for your insights. Your strongly defensive approach seems ideal – providing your striker is able to handle the 1 on 1 breaks and score the odd goal

How do the opposing teams respond to your formation? With one or two defenders at the back? And how deep to you retreat before engaging the opposition? Do you try and draw them deep in order to create a lot of space in the middle of the park?

Russell

My team and I just played our first 6 a side match together in a league but got battered 11-1. our formation was 2 defence, 1 centre, 2 up front. I think we know where we messed up and will play a 2,2,1 sort of pattern next time. Any tips for training/disipline/formations/tactics etc… A few team members keep going on about “I’m good in midfield” crap, all comments good and bad welcome.
Thanks Henry

Deploy the following moves as many as possible to produce dangerous attacks and split opponent defense

1)Play and Go passes
2)Through passes and lob passes ( emphasis your up front player to keep running to the right spot to ensure successful through passes ,being a post won’t help).
3)Runs from the behind (this should come from one of the defenders to the opponents but ensure he doesn’t go too deep up front and so he doesn’t exhaust his stamina)

Let me know your thoughts

That’s an interesting formation. Against a team with Darren’s set up you will have two defenders marking a single striker in defence and be outnumbered in the middle of the park. As a result you may have to defend deep. But I suppose that gives the possibility and drawing the opposition forward and them trying to hit them fast on the break..

Let me know how its works out

Also the middle player needs to be the best passer of the ball and have the best eye for space.

The wingers need to be the fittest as they do more running than the others.

And most importantly you don’t need a goalkeeper that throws the ball out to the opposition!

1 at the back (and doesn’t move much)
2 Defensive Wing backs to give whith.
1 Mid play maker
1 Up front (goal hang if no off sides)

the forward needs to stay right up the pitch almost on the goal line and wait for the long ball or drop off if your team have the ball..

the last defender has to stay back in your half at all times

the wing back defenders should at times get forward and offer somthing down the wings

the midfielder should help out the defence as well as link the play up front.

When defening the defenders should keep an eye an where there forward is and if they get the ball send it up to him

works a treat!

I never suggested that protection was not necessary. However, the point is that “symptoms of abuse” are commonly so non severe that it is almost bizarre to conclude that these children must truly have been abused in the first place. To me this is a clear indication that these scientists are (unscientifically) simply clutching at straws in an attempt to cling onto firmly held beliefs, rather than stop to think about changing the beliefs themselves. For example, “excessive masturbation” and “age inappropriate sexual knowledge” are often used to “prove” abuse took place – often up to age 18. Might I be so bold as to suggest that soebody introduced to sex is likely to want to do it again, regardless of age? Also bear in mind that ‘abuse’ may simply be a technicality in which the age of consent has been straddled by months or ‘acceptable age difference’ . Abuse may not necessarily even involve contact, it may be something as simple as instructing a child how to masturbate.

But the other point was that even without taking this into account, we have a whole *third* of cases, potentially thousands of children every year, being coached unnecessarily into believing in their own abuse. And indeed, a whole third of cases in which adults may have been unnecessarily subjected to massively disproportionate punishment. (Of course, it is not *desirable* for children to have sex; risks such as for example STDs or pregnancy are more than sufficient to suggest it should not be a complete free for all.) But IMHO even if these scientists are correct and every one of those children was in some sense abused, it seems astonishing that a whole third of their test subjects actually showed no symptoms at all. Of *course* real abuse takes place and there must be measures to protect from it. The big problem is in clutching at any straw going to “prove” that abuse ALWAYS goes hand in hand with adult/child sexual contact.

I would also reiterate that there is much more to criticise in such studies, not least sampling methods, which tend to be heavily biased – one study used in this particular meta analysis turns out to be of satanic ritual abuse, yet they apply the same conclusions to every child regardless of the circumstances. In fairness to the authors, they do eventually exclude this study, but not before having derived conclusions from it in this way. Another common problem is inherent sample bias – in that, for example, samples are taken of patients who presumably only would have seeked help in the first place as they were suffering. Another problem is that the very fact that legal issues exist in this area also means that samples will always have the tendency to be biased – counter evidence could be out there en masse, yet who’s going to admit to it?

Another famous meta analysis, by Rind et al, which used non-sexual abuse specific studies to information, shows that a very low proportion of the sample rate actually considered their own sexual contact with adults as children abusive. (off the top of my head, I think it was around 1% – I was talking about this polarization earlier, and I suspect this may be an UNDERestimate for various reasons, but not too large of one) This study actually whipped up such a hysterical backlash that it ended up the subject of a vote in the US government, despite being peer reviewed and confirmed solid research through all the appropriate channels. In the aftermath of the 355-0 vote, senators admitted that they felt politically compelled to vote out of favour of the study, against their better judgement. I have no doubt that such horror stories provide a strong incentive for scientists to leave this area well alone, yet provide a comfortable ride for anybody else who wants to have their research recognised.

I actually entirely agree with your sentiment of “thought vs. action”, and of course there is a massive difference between the two. But then, what word do you suggest using for ‘paedophilia’ as a general sexuality? (Nowadays it is basically recognised as such by science, and defiantly so by paedophiles themselves). Is a ‘paedophile’ not somebody who is sexually attracted to children, regardless of their actions? You wouldn’t say somebody “wasn’t straight” because they made the decision to be celibate.

However, I think there is a bigger problem with using ‘paedophile’ just to refer to practicing paedophiles. It is that the general public unfortuantely makes no distinction at all. All they tend to know is that paedophiles plot to selfishly rape, and possibly murder, children. You will find it very difficult to convince the general public that a ‘non-practicing paedophile’ could exist – indeed, if we reserve paedophile for somebody who has sex with children then “non-practicing paedophile” would be self-contradictory. It leaves the public with no conception that paedophiles as a group deserve any leniency whatsoever – and the general public are the driving force behind legislation in this area.

Indeed, even law enforcement overlooks the distinction entirely. It is very common for the police to leverage any tiny excuse as “reasonable evidence” to make arrests and convictions. Sometimes arrests are made on the flimsiest of evidence. Paedophiles are commonly charged for possessing images that, in any other hands, would be counted as entirely legal. Paedophiles are targeted en masse, practicing or not, because according to the law, even non-practicing paedophiles “represent a potential risk”. The attitude is more “guilty until proven innocent” than the other way round.

I actually feel this is a more political thing than anything else – it is pretty much a fact that we will never eliminate child abuse altogether, and a plea to come down “harder than ever” on paedophiles will always be a crowd pleaser. I feel that the problem is while optimising child safety, this tactic (coming down on paedophiles in general) completely ignores the welfare of paedophiles, many of whom, as you rightly say, are quite capable of living within the law. The other problem is that it allows people with extremist views to rise to the top of the police force and engage in a form of what I like to call “legal vigilanteism”.

The other thing is, paedophiles themselves (practicing or otherwise) feel like they have an identity in their sexuality, and tend not to appreciate reading things in the newspaper such as “paedophiles are blackmailing children online” just as much as, say, a black person would enjoy reading about how “african immigrants all carry guns” or an asian that “all asian immigrants commit tax evasion”. Again, I would reiterate, I’m not trying to speak for paedophiles as a group. Paedophiles are distributed like any other group in society, some are hideous monsters and others are entirely normal. I’m speaking up for those in the latter group.

On your first point: with two thirds of children exhibiting symptoms of abuse then clearly this indicates that the protection of children is definitely required.

On the second and third points, I recognize that sexual maturation is hard to determine. The age of consent in Spain is 13 years old but is 16 years old in the UK.

Physically, puberty may start as early as 9 years old and can finish as late as 18 years old; this makes it difficult to legislate the age of consent with any scientific basis.

Each Government necessarily takes a conservative approach and the ages of consent we have in force in now reflect the need to protect the vulnerable.

Finally, on your opening point “One does not have to be ‘practicing’ to be a paedophile.”, I completely disagree. I do think there is a whole lot of difference between between thinking something and practising it.

Put it this way, I think the whole human race would be locked up in prison if you could be convicted of ‘thought crime’.

There is a fundamental, significant, enormous difference between thought and action. This is what makes us as humans.

A non-practising paedophile is not a paedophile.