This post is not a pipe . . . nor is it a spoon

This season, my U-13 travel soccer team made the leap from 9 v 9 on a small grass field to 11 v 11 on an enormous full-sized high school turf field-- the space is vast and incomprehensible for the pre-pubescent 11 and 12 year olds of which my squad is comprised, goals will be few and far between, and most attacks will peter out forty yards from the endline, so this year's mantra for my midfield is straight from The Matrix: there is no forward and there is no backwards, only open space and open players (our only hope is to possess the ball, bring it all the way back to the keeper, out to the sides, up the field a bit, then back again . . . until the other team collapses from exhaustion . . . then, if we've got anything left, we'll finally move forward).