Football/Soccer Session (Beginner): Big 5, 5 Aside Football

Big 5 (30 mins)

Potential Theme/Length of game: 30mins

Big 5, 5 Aside Football

Introduction of the Big 5 animals: Lion, Leopard, Buffalo, Rhino and Elephant

Organization/Rules:

Ask your players to think about the different characteristics/personalities of the Big 5; elephant, lion, rhino, leopard and buffalo. How do they behave?

Elephant: Slow, strong, protective

Rhino: Defensive, protective, powerful, attacker

Buffalo: Slow, boring, strong as a herd and a lone

Lion: Quick, fierce, powerful

Leopard: Clever, quick, strong, careful

If these animals played football which positions would they be best suited for? GoalKeeper, Defence, Midfield, Striker

GK: Elephant?

Defense: Buffaloes?

Mid-Field: Rhinos?

Strikers: Lion & Leopard?

You can either play 5 aside where each player is assigned an individual animal or larger groups with more animals.

Play a game of football but the players must try and ‘act’ like the animals they have been assigned and copy their characteristics.

Questions:

Bring the players together after 5 - 8mins

Ask the Players what issues animals face, especially the Big 5 in their area: Poaching hopefully being an answer. What animals are being poached; Rhino, Elephants, Lion, and Buffalo.

Protection (30 mins)

Possible Progressions/Variations: Play the game again but this time still have the ‘poachers’ on the side but each time a team scores a goal they can choose a protection pre-decided; fence, more rangers, jobs etc. A player or 2 are selected to be the ‘protection’ and now must stop the poachers from ‘poaching’ a player/animal.

Questions

Bring the player together and ask them if it was harder for the poachers to poach.

What happens if all the animals are poached? No jobs, no tourism, no food

As a community do we have a role in protecting animals? If yes what role? If no why not?

Should communities benefit from protected areas?

Another variation: You could ascribe monatory value to the animals; $1000 each, if they lose animals to poaching they lose revenue, the team with the least revenue loses.

Value can also be ascribed to scoring a goal '$500' with which the team can 'purchase' protection for the animals; fence is $300 (2 players), Ranger is $500 (1 protector) job creation is $1000, (5 protectors) , tourism project $2000, but includes fence (2 protectors) Ranger(1 protector and job creation (5 Protector).

Also teams can 'sell' an animal to gain revenue which can be spent on protecting the other animals.

Questions

At the end of the game what animals are left? What is their value? Did have to 'purchase' protection? Why? Did you spend more on protecting animals than the total value of animas left? Can we really say animal is 'worth' x amount?