A Comparative study in floorball about the difference between small-sided games versus full-size game

The thesis was a request from the Finnish Floorball Federation from the Game Development department. Even though studies in the field of floorball are growing, there has not been done a study about the small-sided games which as a tool for children and youth coaches is important. The small-sided games have been become more popular and acknowledged especially in the team sports and are used lot in floorball. The goal in this study is to examine can small-sided games support better children learning of sport specific skills. The goalkeepers data and results are not included. Before able to teach a skill it is important to understand how skill can be tough, for this reason this thesis presents different learning pedagogy styles, TGFU-model and other research done about small-sided games. Thesis started fall 2017 with the two local teams who participated in the study; players were born years 2007 and 2008. The teams played three games which different court sizes and where the amount of players was increased or decreased. The study is focused on the children results during the game, not the level of coaching, previous experience of small-sided games or skill difference between teams. All the games were recorded with two cameras and data was collected by tagging games afterwards with MyCoazh- tagging program. Tagging, analyzing and literature research was done fall 2018. The thesis was done in co-operation with following organizations; the Finnish Floorball Federation, MyCoahz and Suomen Erotuomariklubi. There are different factors examined for example overall actions, successful actions, the average for players ball touches, the difference between game types when focused on max and low ball touches at the individual level and percentage for shooting, dribbling, passing et cetera. From the results can be seen that small-sided games for example are beneficial when wanting to practice shooting, dribbling or 1vs1 situations. However for passing a full size court game could be more recommended