Setup: A 30×30m grid, a ball between two. Minors are still growing, so the warm-up has to earn the load that follows — start easy, build in stages, and get the heart rate up gradually rather than in one lung-burning burst. Have water on the sideline and a short break planned mid-session.

How it works: Three gears over twelve minutes. First, easy movement: jog, skip, side-shuffle while passing the ball on the move. Second, open the joints: lunges with a reach, leg swings, hip openers between passes. Third, lift the tempo: sharp fist-passes at a jog rising to a run, a few strides at three-quarter pace to finish. By the last minute the lads should be warm, breathing hard and moving well — that is the body ready for what is coming, not sore from it.

Setup: A 35×25m square with a gate to score through at each end. Two teams of four, one ball, spare teams resting in bibs on the side ready to rotate in. Run three or four squares at once so everyone works.

How it works: Four-a-side, keep-ball to work the ball through either end gate for a point. The moment it is scored or lost, the ball is live the other way — no stopping, no resets. Two minutes flat out, then the resting four sprint in and the working four step out to recover. That swap is the whole design: short, hard efforts with real rest between, which is exactly how a match asks you to run. Count each team's points across their shifts.

Setup: Split a 60×40m area into three zones across its length: a defensive third, a middle third, an attacking third. Bibs on. The middle third is where the work lives.

How it works: Start with a plus-one in the middle third — say four attackers against three defenders — so there is always a spare to find and a runner to track. Win the ball out of the middle and you may break into the attacking third to score through a gate; concede it and you are sprinting back to defend your own. Nobody is allowed to stand still in the middle third, so the engine keeps turning. Play three-minute games, rest a minute, rotate who starts with the overload.

Setup: A proper game on two-thirds of the pitch, small goals or posts at each end, teams of six or seven. Keep three or four in bibs off the pitch as rolling subs at the halfway line.

How it works: Play a real match, but with a rule the lads will not have met: any player can tag off to a sub at any dead ball or by a touch at halfway, and they must, because we want fresh legs keeping the tempo brutal. This is the closest thing to championship running they will do all week — high tempo held for twenty minutes because nobody has to pace themselves through it. Coaches keep the ball moving with a spare in a pocket so there are no long standing breaks. Score normally.

Setup: Jog a lap of the grid dropping to a walk, then circle up for a slow stretch — calves, quads, hamstrings, hips, twenty seconds a side. Water in properly before anyone leaves.

How it works: Bring the heart rate down gradually rather than stopping dead. While you stretch, teach the lads to read their own bodies: how do the legs feel, any tightness, anything that grumbled tonight. Minors who learn to report a niggle early are the ones who miss one week instead of six. Take a couple of answers, then finish on the reflection question.