Football Injuries

[InTheLongGrass]

For those of you who have primary aged kids training/playing football outside of school, how injured do they get?
My 9 year old played as much as he could before lockdown last year, had some bumps and bruises, but nothing he complained about for more than a few minutes after it happened.
He got moved into a Y5/Y6 group in September. In 5 sessions, he has had a foot so swollen and bruised he had to skip the following session, a delightful pattern of circular bruises on his hand where he was kicked by studs and a almighty bruise on his ribs (DH was there for that I dont know how).
He's saying he doesnt want to go back (the kid is football mad). Is this level of contact between kids about right at this age? ie is he being a softy and all play at this age is like this, or might looking for a different group be worth it?

Unfortunately boys football moves from fun to competitive quite early and enthusiastic but inexperienced tackles can lead to nasty injuries, especially as they become physically bigger and stronger.

If your dh is there can he see and judge if the level of "enthusiasm" is appropriate/speak to the coaches if the boys (or a particular boy) are lifting their studs too high or performing illegal slide tackles etc?

ds came home with bumps, bruises and cuts most weeks, thankfully nothing too serious, but it never put him off going and most of the boys showed off their war wounds with pride, attending training but sitting at the side line. He managed to keep going until he took the hard decision to stop when he was 13, but the last year he hated and was really clinging on hoping football would just be fun again.

Thank you.
Unfortunately, DH will just tell DS to toughen up, whatever the issue, so that's not worth pursuing.
From an inexperienced eye, he's not being singled out but he is a fraction of the size of some of them, and I suspect the knocks are harder than he is used to, just down the the size and strength of some of the kids playing.

My son is 8. The level of contact you describe sounds entirely normal, I'm afraid. Sometimes there is a real disparity in size amongst the boys at this age but there is little you can do about that. We have constant injuries here (same for daughters team, 2yrs older!). It's a contact sport and it happens

Normal id say. Like pp said, it's a contact sport so it's bound to happen.

Also think it's about this age that a child decides if they want to continue with said contact sports or not. My son is 11 now, but I know no knock will affect his desire to get back on the pitch.

Incase anyone finds this later, after another disastrous Saturday training, we moved to a Tuesday evening - same club.
The kids are much smaller. Aparently the oldest group on a Sat is years 5/6/7/8, and Tuesday is just Y5/6.
One much happier child, and the size range makes much more sense now!