Your child’s coach is probably thinking about something completely different to what you’re thinking about on the sideline.
That’s not a criticism. It’s just what happens when one person is trying to win the quarter and another is trying to develop fifteen eight-year-olds at once. The view from the fence and the view from the bench are genuinely different, and nobody’s really sat down and explained that to most footy families.
I’ve been on both sides of that fence. As a parent of a junior AFL player, I’ve had the instinct to mentally track every touch, every missed kick, every time my daughter didn’t get a handball. And I’ve spoken to enough volunteer coaches to know that those coaches are watching something else entirely. Here’s what they wish they could tell us.
The Number Coaches Actually Care About Isn’t Goals
Every parent’s eyes go to the scoreboard. Goals feel concrete. They feel measurable. They feel like proof something happened.
But most junior AFL coaches — especially at the under 9, under 10, and under 11 levels — are working toward something that doesn’t show up on any scoreboard.
They’re watching a nine-year-old who, six weeks ago, would throw the ball in panic whenever she had it, and who today held her ground and actually looked up before she handballed. That moment is worth more to a coach than three goals kicked by the kid who’s just naturally bigger than everyone else this year.
The goal scoring stat is almost meaningless at junior level. Physical maturity does most of the heavy lifting. The kids tracking and leading and disposing under pressure — that’s where the coach’s attention is. And those things are genuinely hard to count from the boundary.
“My Kid Barely Got a Touch” Is Rarely the Whole Story
This one comes up constantly. A parent spends the whole game watching their child and counts — mentally or out loud — every disposal, every contest, every moment their kid was or wasn’t involved.
A volunteer coach is watching the whole field, managing fifteen other kids, dealing with a sub who refuses to go on, and trying to remember what he was meant to remind the ruckman about before the centre bounce.
What reads as “she barely touched it” to a parent watching one child might actually have been “she led into space six times and set up two goals she’ll never get credit for.” Leads — the runs a player makes to get free from their opponent and give a teammate someone to kick to — barely register to most parents. But coaches notice them. And they matter enormously to how the game flows.
Disposals (kicks and handballs) are the easy stat to count. Movement, positioning, defensive effort — these are invisible to the scoreboard and nearly invisible on the sideline. Coaches are watching the things that don’t have obvious numbers attached.
What “Trying” Looks Like Varies Enormously by Age
A twelve-year-old who looks like they’re not trying might be overwhelmed by reading the game. A ten-year-old who looks lost might simply not yet understand the positional rules. Coaches adjust for this. They know that what looks like effort is partly development stage, partly confidence, partly what happened at school on Friday.
Volunteer coaches at community clubs are mostly not formally trained. They’re parents and ex-players giving up Saturday mornings because someone had to. But they’re still trying to do something nuanced — meet fifteen kids where they are individually, while also putting out a team.
The parent who comes up at three-quarter time to say “she needs to get more involved” is usually not wrong in their observation. But the coach may already know and may have a specific reason for what they’re asking that child to work on this week that has nothing to do with involvement count.
Stats Are More Useful When Both Sides Are Having the Same Conversation
Here’s what coaches have told me they actually want from parents: context. Not confrontation, not commentary. Context.
Specifically: what did your child say on the way home? Were they frustrated? Energised? What did they notice about their own game?
That information is gold for a volunteer coach who’s managing a full team and can’t debrief with every player individually after the siren. Parents are sitting next to that player for forty minutes in the car.
The gap isn’t that parents care too much. The gap is that parents and coaches rarely share what they’re each seeing. A parent who quietly tracks their child’s disposals, contested ball, and time in the game — and brings that to a conversation with the coach rather than the boundary fence — is genuinely useful. The data becomes a bridge rather than a weapon.
This is actually one of the things ScorX was built around. Parents can record their own child’s stats during a game — touches, kicks, handballs, goals, effort plays — and those stats can be shared directly with the team coach or a private development coach. Not as a complaint. As a conversation starter. The coach gets information they couldn’t collect themselves. The parent gets to feel like their sideline attention is worth something.
But there’s a third voice in this conversation that often gets missed entirely: the player’s own. ScorX also lets kids log how they felt they played — what they thought they did well, what felt hard, how they’d rate their own game. That might sound small, but it’s often the most useful piece of information a coach can get. A child who writes “I felt like I was always in the wrong spot” is telling their coach something no stat can capture. A child who writes “I felt really good at getting free but couldn’t hold onto it” has identified their own development edge. Coaches can’t ask every player that question after every game. But if the answer is already waiting for them, they’ll use it.
The Stats Worth Tracking Are the Ones That Show Effort, Not Just Outcome
If you’re going to pay attention to numbers — and there’s nothing wrong with that — these are the ones coaches would point you toward for junior players:
Disposals by possession type: Was your kid kicking or handballing? Are they developing both skills, or defaulting to one?
Contested versus uncontested: Did they do anything when it was hard, or only when they had time and space?
Time on ground and positioning: Were they where they were supposed to be? This one’s hard to track from the sideline, but notice if they’re consistently in the right zone.
Effort plays: Tackles (when a player wraps up or stops an opponent from getting away), chases, and leading runs. These never make the scoreboard but they show a coach almost everything they need to know about whether a player is working.
Goals are fine. But a kid who kicks one goal from a tap-on and disappears for the rest of the game has had a very different experience from a kid who kicks no goals and competes for everything.
What Coaches Wish the Post-Game Car Ride Sounded Like
Not a debrief. Not a breakdown. Just a question.
“What was the hardest part of today?”
That’s it. That’s the one coaches wish more parents would ask, because it opens a conversation on the child’s terms rather than the parent’s observation. A kid who says “I couldn’t work out where to go when the ball went to the other side” has just given you and the coach more useful information than any stat sheet could.
What a child notices about their own game is often more revealing than what a parent tracked from the boundary. Kids are remarkably self-aware about their sport when you give them the space to be — they just don’t always get asked the right question at the right moment. A ten-year-old might not be able to explain that their handball efficiency dropped in the third quarter, but they can tell you they felt panicked every time the ball came to them on their left side. That’s a coaching cue.
The number of touches matters much less than whether your child is growing inside the game. Coaches can see that growth even when there’s nothing on the scoreboard to prove it. The more we as parents can see it too — and the more our kids can start to see it themselves — the better the conversation gets.
Frequently Asked Questions
What stats should I track for my junior AFL player?
Focus on effort-based stats rather than outcomes: disposals (kicks and handballs), contested ball, tackles, and time on ground. These show a coach how hard your child is working and whether skills are developing — not just whether they were in the right place to score.
How can I share game stats with my child’s AFL coach?
The most effective approach is a brief, collaborative conversation rather than a handover of raw numbers. Apps like ScorX let parents record their child’s stats during a game and share them directly with a team coach or private development coach, giving the coach context they often can’t gather alone.
Why do volunteer AFL coaches focus on development over results?
At junior level, physical maturity has a huge impact on scoring and contested ball. Coaches are trying to build skills and game sense that will matter long-term, regardless of which team wins on Saturday. A child who leads well and reads the play but doesn’t touch the ball much may be doing exactly what a good coach wants.
Is it helpful to tell the coach how many disposals my child got?
It can be, if framed as information rather than a complaint. Coaches often can’t track individual players closely during a full team game. If you’ve noticed a consistent pattern — fewer touches, a specific position not working, difficulty in certain situations — raising it calmly and curiously will be received much better than raising it on the boundary line mid-quarter.
What’s the best question to ask my child after an AFL game?
Coaches consistently point to open questions about difficulty or effort rather than performance. “What was the hardest part today?” or “Was there a moment where you knew exactly what to do?” tend to produce more honest, useful reflection than “Why didn’t you get more of the ball?”
Can my child’s own feelings about a game be useful to a coach?
Genuinely, yes — often more useful than the stats. A child’s self-assessment tells a coach things that numbers can’t: whether they felt confident, where they felt lost, what they noticed about their own performance. ScorX lets kids log their own post-game reflection alongside the parent’s stats, so a coach sees both the objective picture and the player’s own read on it.
ScorX is free to download. Parents can track their child’s stats during any game, then share them with their coach when the time is right.