The siren has sounded on my first season as coach of the mighty under-8s.

It has been a rewarding period in which many skills have been honed.

One of the most impressive things I mastered, for example, was how to tie kids’ bootlaces without looking.

Part of the gig with coaching the under-8s is that you have to be an umpire too.

This means you have to keep an eye on the ball at all times, even when tying triple bows in miniature footwear.

From what I can tell, the unravelling of laces is the most debilitating thing that can happen to a player in the under-8s, where pretty much no body contact takes place except for occasional, unavoidable accidents, such as when two players following the trajectories of opposing dragon flies collide.

Loose laces are like the kids’ equivalent of adductor tendinopathy or osteitis pubis in real football, only quicker to remedy, thankfully. But you have to know what you’re doing, which is where training comes in.

Fortunately, laces unravel as frequently at footy training as they do on game day – roughly at the rate of one set per 7.5 minutes – so when you’re on the big stage you can be confident in the fact that you’ve done it all before.

Focus is another important thing to know about at this level.

The most important thing to know about it is that seven-year-olds focus on vastly different things than grown-ups do.

To give an example in football terms, a grown-up might focus on gaining effective centre clearances and kicking long to a player on the lead.

However, a seven-year-old might focus on just how much he thinks he looks like Shane Crawford in his own shadow if he stands with his hands on his hips and puffs his chest out.

As a result, if an effective centre clearance is actually gained and the ball travels in the direction of the intensely focused Shadow Crawford, it may in fact hit him on the back of the head.

At which point, Shadow Crawford’s focus would instantaneously turn towards the game at hand, whereby he would rummage enthusiastically for the ball until his endeavours are sidetracked by another distraction, such as his shoelaces coming undone, which of course was sadly inevitable.

It is impressive to watch the pure agility with which a junior footballer can shift focus from one distraction to the next.

They are peerless in this regard, except maybe for Labrador puppies, however I would need to see the full report to say for sure.

What chance do you think I had at training a few weeks back when in the middle of a kicking drill, while attempting to instil the importance of the “laces away from faces” axiom for trouble-free drop punts, Keegan alerted the rest of his teammates to the fact that a stray cat was running along the boundary line?

It was a total shambles unless you were a mob of excited kids prepared to break ranks and chase a startled tabby through a neighbouring paddock before it disappeared up a storm-water drain, in which case it was as good as it gets.

It was a similar thing when Little Jack saw the beautiful moon. We call him Little Jack because he’s younger and smaller than Regular Jack.

It was Little Jack’s turn to try an overhead mark, when out of the corner of his eye he noticed something large looming on the horizon.

“Wow, Coach, check that out,’’ he said excitedly.

A big, orange full moon was creeping slowly into the night sky.

It was impossible to compete with such an event. Silently, with the lunar lightshow before us, we each pondered our own small place in the universe.

Eventually, however, the time for introspection was over. The moment had arrived for a big game of Octopus Tiggy, the kids’ favourite.

Somewhere amid all of this during the year, we hopefully also learned something about the game, teamwork, looking out for each other, commitment and sportsmanship.

So to Sidney, Cam, Little Jack, Regular Jack, Spence, Alex, Nick, Keegan, Mitchell, Zayde and Hank, thanks for making it such a fun year and enjoy the off-season.

I could encourage you to stay focused and practise kicking on your non-preferred side at least once a week, but I know summer is coming and that means distractions such as cricket, fishing and the beach.

There’s another thing about summer that is important to consider.

It’s as good a time as any to learn to tie your own shoelaces.