ATTENTION PLAYERS AND PARENTS 

 Training for this week (Thursday 4th December) is cancelled due to Ricky being interstate. Don't forget the Pumas Xmas Party is on Tuesday the 9th of December at 7pm. PUMAS MIX and PUMAS 9s are still playing on Friday night in the VFFC Futsal League.

See you all at the Xmas Party! 

ATTENTION ALL PLAYERS: LEAGUE VENUE RELOCATION

The new venue (should remain the venue for the remainder of the season) is MOWBRAY COLLEGE, PATTERSON CAMPUS, MELTON. It is only five minutes away from the old venue and will hopefully become a happy home for the remainder of the league season. We have included a map below:

Fixtures can be found below and we will stick up posters with the new location and map on the doors of the old location for those that don't read this update. See you at Mowbray College!

 VFFC Futsal League COMPLETE Fixtures

Please see below for full VFFC Futsal League fixture. Please note that this is subject to change as the organisers are trying to fit in Round 5 (the week that we missed). See above for new league venue.

Week 10 - 5 Dec 2008

*Please Note: Ricky will not be attending on this night as he will be at an interstate coaching conference.

Week 11 - 12 Dec 2008

U13 League GRAND FINAL - 12 Dec 2008

Remember, it's not about the results you get, it's about the style of Futsal you play. To dare is to do!

GO PUMAS!

LATEST NEWS

Give Futsal a chance - Les Murray Blog

September 30, 2008          

It will come as no surprise to the most mildly informed football punter that Ronaldinho is a former futsal player. Nor that so is Ronaldo. And, unless I am mistaken, so were Kaká, Robinho and Pato.

It cannot be a coincidence that men of such consummate technical ability are graduates of the indoor, five-a-side configuration of football, as are literally thousands of other Brazilian stars of the outdoor game.

My late friend, Johnny Warren, babbled on about this stuff for decades without being heard. And four years past his death he’s still not being heard, or not enough. The indoor game continues to be sidelined, like some insignificant cousin, its critical importance ignored to football’s utter detriment.

Futsal, or indoor soccer as some still call it, is a burgeoning activity in the suburbs, a great source of fun, especially at junior level, and an even greater vehicle for technical development.

It is, in effect, a long established and deep rooted mirror of what was only recently mandated nationwide to improve the level of skill among our growing young: small sided games or SSGs.

Futsal is played on small courts, five versus five, compelling players, due to lack of space, to have optimum command of the ball. Unlike on a large field, with large goals, there is no margin for error. You place a pass millimetres wide of its mark and it is bound to be intercepted by an opponent. You crack a shot at goal that wavers just slightly from its puny target between keeper and post and you will miss.

In futsal there is no option other than to have the ball completely at your command. With the ball at your feet your only options are to make a telling pass of total accuracy, take a shot that is placed rather than just driven in hope, or dribble, wiggle your bum, and make more space and time.

You can do none of these things without utter ball skills. In futsal you simply cannot win just by being stronger, bigger and by getting stuck in. Hence the conviction, Johnny Warren’s conviction, that futsal is a seriously good medium for correcting what Australian footballers distinctly lack on world comparisons: technique.

In recent times I have taken much time out to attend futsal matches. They were glorious eye openers.

In the first instance I noted that, unlike games of the outdoor variety, they are sources of utter congenial fun for all. Players run free in a quest to express themselves, jutting about, stopping and starting, running into spaces, passing and flicking, sometimes dribbling, always in a compulsion to create.

It is a wondrous spectacle so different to the mindless biff and bang that goes on the outdoor grounds where players, especially children, are asked to chase and run, and boot the bejesus out of the ball in quest of victories, with parents bellowing down their ears in the stupid belief that they become better players for hearing them.

At futsal games, in stark comparison to what happens on the suburban grass fields, there is no bellowing. Parents sit quietly, cheering only when a goal is scored or letting out an occasional ‘aahh’ when someone plays a back heel, a nutmeg or does a swivel to make space and beat a defender.

Yet the wonderful package that is futsal is being vastly undervalued in our football culture. It is time for that to change.