Hi Dave,
I nearly wrote in response to an earlier post "Wait 'till they find out you can take it quickly", but I had second thoughts about introducing this to the thread when we were talking about some very important basic concepts in the rules early in the season and I didn't want to give you even more heart palpitations before Sunday!
So, yes, it is a free kick and therefore it can be taken quickly. Therefore, yes, the opposition can be penalised for not being 7m.
BUT, and this is a BIG BUT, if this area of the game is not introduced well by a ref who doesn't understand all of the ways to manage the game at these points, it has the capacity to really mess up the game.
Some examples of not managing/introducing this well include:
Not letting the kids know in advance that this is allowed
Not making the SH take the free kick properly (this one aplies to fk's generally)
Letting the SH take the free kick from the wrong place, i.e. not at the place of infringment (or in a line behind the place of infringment)
Letting the SH take the follow up "not 7" free kick from the wrong place or without the ref having made the mark for the follow up free kick
Penalising players for not being 7m back when they are not interfearing with play and/or retreating
Penalising players for not being 7m back many times in a row, when they probably don't even know what the problem is
Telling the kids "You can't take the second one quickly"
And I am sure other people have other examples here as well...
As far as I can see, you have a couple of options for your festival:
1. You can up front tell the other coaches that as this is early in the season and although you know quickly taken free kicks are possible, there are many other things that have been introduced to work on, and so you would like all refs not to allow them today. - wait for the moaning from the 'better' teams about how they have been pracicing this for weeks all through the summer.
2. You can up front tell the other coaches that quickly taken free kicks are allowed and set some expectation about how you would like them to manage that area of the game - the risk here is that some of them will know this already and know how to manage this, some of them will have only have just got their head around some of the more basic rules and will have no idea how this works.
3. You don't mention it in your brief at all, unless someone asks, the assumption being that we all know that they are allowed right? - be prepared for questions through the festival from teams who had no idea about this - potential risk, total mess and a lot of grumbling.
Sorry for the long post, hope it helped.
Thanks,
Antony