After a hectic season I’ve finally a few moments to update the blog. It has been another long season after the severe winter weather caused a backlog of fixtures. The League I am involved with had to extend their League season up to the last possible point and thankfully everyone managed to finish their fixtures.
Around these parts we are confined to when the season must end by a) the Council requiring pitches for cricket and b) the County FA stipulating when all games must be completed by. Oddly other County FAs allow Leagues to play 11 a side matches in June ( I know, I have no idea how they bent that FA rule!) but I don’t think its healthy to be playing that late, we all need a bit of a break!
I recently attended an FA “Your Kids, Your Game” consultation event and it is interesting to see that junior grassroots football will be going through quite a radical change in the coming season. The proposal is for smaller teams, focusing on skills and enjoyment and less competitive football. I will revisit this in a later blog post.
I am still on my one man campaign against Clubs publishing results at U7 and U8 (breach of Standard Code of Rule) and those displaying images and details of their young players (bad practice). You think the FA would pay me for this which is essentially their job but I’m just a volunteer!
Football Governance is in the spotlight at the moment as the Select Committee meet with the FA as part of the investigation into the state of the game. Whilst the headlines will no doubt be about the power of the Premier League, I hope that this investigation shines light on to, in my opinion, poor practice across grassroots football.
Among other points, the investigation will consider if governance rules (and the governing bodies that set and apply them) – fit for purpose. I hope that rather than ask high profile people, the Committee reach out to the volunteers at grassroots level who have to deal with the FA on a regular basis. Too often mistakes are made, rules breached without any comeback. I do believe this is, in part ,down to FA staff not being up to speed on the rules and regulations. Only this week I’ve had to put someone straight on a simple matter after they had been given duff information by their local County FA. That just shouldn’t be happening.
I really hope 2011 is a big turning point and we see a huge overhaul of the governing bodies that regulate (or attempt to!) football.
When I first raised the point about the ban on reporting U7 and U8 results I was surprised to read people’s comments that this still goes on. Despite it being in the Standard Code of Rules (and therefore something we all must abide by and cannot opt out of), clubs still seem to be flaunting this. Perhaps they don’t know. Perhaps they are a new team, still finding their way and their County FA should be keeping an eye on things and offering advice and a crisp new copy of the Association Rules.
You can therefore imagine the shock I have had by entering “U7 team” in Google and looking at a few of the returns. Far from being an isolated problem for small clubs, I’ve stumbled over Charter Standard Clubs in breach of the rule. In fact I’ve found one Charter Standard Club at Community Level celebrating the success of their U7s team and listing results and goalscorers! Community Club level is meant to be the pinnacle of Charter Standard, beacons in the world of junior football as examples of well run clubs. Surely they, above everyone else, should now this simple rule.
It gets worse. They have an U6 team. With U6 results.
It gets even worse. Every child (including those U8s and U7s) has a picture with their name, appearances and other personal data. The Club Secretary will have had to have been on the FA Child Protection Course and done the WOW (Wefare Officer Workshop) so how has this been allowed to happen? Is it the County FA to blame? Are they not educating people enough? I have been on the above course and it was made very clear about the FA’s stance on player profiles at that age.
It is bringing the Charter Mark’s importance and relevance into question? Is Charter Standard handed out like sweets? That’s another blog post.
So I’ll wrap this post up as I need to compose a few emails to the relevant people at the FA. I may come back and name and shame a few, let’s see what happens. Either way, I’ll keep you all in the loop as to what I hear back.
So, you’ve taken your Back the Bid logo off your letterheads, left the England 2018 Facebook group and put your freebie “World Cup Coming Home” tshirt on the pile of “wear to wash the car” clothes. Where now for the English FA? There has been a lot of moaning and pointing at FIFA and how they reached their decision not to award hosting rights to England. Fans everywhere claim corruption and conspiracy are to blame. We will probably never know why FIFA chose to hand the rights to Russia, a country that has never hosted the WC, and whose towns and people will benefit from new stadia over a country that has already had the WC, the European Championships and whose teams, towns and fans already have funded programmes of development. Still, it is unfair isn’t it?
My personal thought is that we need to have a good look at ourselves before we start complaining about FIFA. My experience of the FA is not always positive. Charter Standard for one seems hit and miss, with Clubs awarded it willy nilly, whilst others have to abide by strict rules that no one else seems bothered with. We all play the same game and yet we aren’t governed fairly and equally. From County to County the enforcement of the Standard Code of Rules varies. Why? Even from League to League. Some Leagues and Clubs are made to act a certain way by the FA whilst others get awards and cash handouts even when they do not meet criteria and/or breach rules. Where is the fairness here?
Until someone goes through the entire FA with a broom and gets rid of career minded people and gives jobs to people with hands on football experience we are as bad as anyone. I saw an advert recently for CEO of a County FA. Essential skills and experience: senior management/health and safety/management of staff. Desirable: Interest in football.
Totally the wrong way around. You can teach someone with a vocation in football how to lead and manage, you can’t teach a bank manager wanting a pay rise about football.
As winter approaches it is astonishing how many people proclaim themselves as meteorologists and groundsmen. As soon as there is a sprinkling of frost, parents and coaches alike start stabbing at the grass in the gardens to ponder if their game will be off or on. Whilst most games don’t take place in people’s gardens, knowing when to call a game off is something that refs, clubs and groundsmen worry over. Call it off too soon and if it thaws out in time, everyone moans at you for costing them a game of football and a fixture backlog. Call it off too late and everyone moans at you for dragging them out of bed needlessly. Don’t call it off at all and risk serious injury. It is sometimes a tough call.
Whilst there is sometimes pressure to get games played, player safety is the most important thing. That said, you should put some effort into getting the game played if you can. You’ve often 22 little pairs of eyes staring at you, waiting fo you to give the green light. Don’t be lazy and stay in bed, having had a quick look at your own grass to make a decision.
We often get emails from parents and managers moaning that their child/player has scored 10 goals in a match but they can’t record it. The FA do not permit leagues to collect results or form tables for U7s and U8s, which is quite right in my opinion. At that age, the focus should be on enjoyment and learning. Yet there is a school of thought that the National game is suffering as a result of not developing a “winning mentality” so early on. Do children grow up and remember who they beat 17-0 when they were 7 years old? Does it really alter the way they develop as players if we don’t keep score?
I’m sure we’ve all experienced it, but most kids don’t know who they are playing this week or who they played last week. All a league table would do is give the manager/parent something to boast about, because many children are not interested in following tables, they want to be out having fun not working out which teams dropped points and to whom.
Should this then be extended to U9 and U10? What age is the right age to start to play to win? I believe that mini-soccer should be about developing skills and children making their own mistakes and learning from them. The pressure put on children by WAACers, (win at all cost managers) who are chasing title dreams will not develop better technical players at that age.
It is a difficult subject, for one, children develop at different speeds. An U9 year old with a birthday in September may be more astute to winning and losing than an U9 who doesn’t have a birthday until July. The FA have drawn the line at U8, but it is up to individual leagues when they bring in competitive football after that.
I’m getting a bit worried about the next generation of football players. I had a phone call from a junior team manager asking if they should still play if it rains. Rain? Rain?!! Unless the pitch has turned into a swamp and is unsafe then why not? Likewise, last winter, I heard matches will called off because the parents didn’t want their children “playing out” in the cold. The pitch was perfectly playable, but as it was a bit parky, they didn’t want to know. I realise that it makes me sound older beyond my years to say it but “It never did me any harm!”. Seriously, as long as the pitch is safe, then should we really be calling games off because of this “child welfare” issue, where the welfare here is that the child gets wets and/or cold. Has anyone actually asked the children what they want to do? I did. Turns out a lot of them quite like it. It am starting to think it is the parents who don’t want to get out of a warm bed on a Sunday morning to stand watching their child play.
A common complaint we hear is that pro football clubs offer trials to junior players throughout the season and can then sign them, regardless of whether they are already at a grassroots club or not. This often causes problems as teams find themselves unable to field a team as a result of losing players to the academies. Some academies are keen to work with grassroots teams and allow the player to remain at the grassroots club, playing week in, week out, but training with the academy staff. However, you can imagine that if the academy organises a friendly with another pro club and says to the young player, “we’re playing Arsenal/Chelsea/Man Utd/Liverpool this week, do you want to come or do you want to face LocalJuniorTeam Rovers?”, the youngster probably isn’t going to have to think too hard about that one. I’m not sure what can be done so that the academies get the best players they find, the grassroots team isn’t decimated and, above all, the player gets the most enjoyment out of the game as possible. It’s a tough one.
I contacted the FA about this incident to see if they would be taking action as I thought that the ref had missed it. They replied that the referee had seen it and didn’t think it was a foul. So he saw the contact, in the penalty area but didn’t award anything. Any refs out there want to comment on what they see?
If you’ve been to watch a professional game in the last few weeks you will have seen the players wearing green and black tshirts, badges handed out to children and giant flags waved all to support the Kick Racism Out of Football campaign.
This is an annual event and the FA are always keen to be seen to be doing something to rid football of racism. That said, my personal view is that it isn’t a big problem anyway these days. I hear far more taunts made because the player is ginger, fat, short, ugly, welsh etc. I suspect this is why this year’s campaign had the more inclusive title of One Game, One Community. The idea being to include everyone in football. All very well and good on the big screen but where was the support for grassroots teams? The FA and Kick It Out should have worked with youth grassroots teams to promote events they were holding and really seek to engage people at a young age. I fear they think that is too much effort for too little public reward. The youth football clubs can be the heartbeat of a small community. Sadly there is little publicity for those that ran One Game, One Community event, it is far easier to give a few flags to the big clubs instead.
