Your Kids Your Say - Charlton

Jim Jackson went to the "your kids your say Road show" on the 14th September at Charlton. How I saw it.

"if all leagues were run likes yours we would not be here tonight"

The Road show was sold as a consultation, but while there was time to ask questions very little seemed to be answered. I am still not clear on what is happening, but heard that FA studies have conclusively shown (we were told) that young children don't like competition football, getting trophies, winning...

New size formats that are planned will see 5v5, then 7v7, then 9v9 then finally 11v11. Will be non competitive up to under 13, Age bands for each team will change from Jan to Dec instead of school year... We have been told that this will have benefits because this is what they do in France, Spain, Germany.

This is not the final decision!! this is what this Road shows are proposing. If these rules come in I believe they will only affect new teams from 2013.... When we have another world cup failure in 2014, the FA may find out that Pelé played football barefooted with a makeshift ball and following this model.

The loudest round of applause seemed to come for a company secretary who gave his thoughts on why competitive football should remain.

There was one point when a Alan Clarke, London FA representative, asked a question relating to "age branding", for which he said he had never got an answer, he was told "I'm surprised I have not given you this answer before", then went on to again not answer the question in much the same way as a very skilled politician. This London FA guy is normally no walkover but he had the look on his face of someone who had spent a lot of time banging his head against the wall... At this point the Microphone was taken away from him.

But The SELKENT representative, Sally Dolan, is made of stronger stuff, with a much stronger grip on the microphone. She put across points relating to competitive football and how SELKENT do things; "kids want to play competitive, we know pitches can be the wrong size and goals are too big.... Some leagues, including SELKENT do offer 9-a-side. " "Changing the mini-soccer game to being played in four quarters will make the non-competitive match no more then another training exercise."

"U11/U12 pitch size has been in your hands for the last 20 years. You had the power to protect these players long before this by making it a rule that U11/ U12 could only play on a junior Pitch with 21ft goals. Your failed to do this until now only because you want to introduce 9 v 9 using the fact that clubs are irresponsible and play their young players on pitches that are far to big for them. Hence making it our fault instead of theirs."

Sally went on to say "For the 12 years mangers have attended Level 1, Level 2 and age appropriate but it seems the FA believe this has counted for
nothing because we still do not know how to coach players hence the big change. How do you intend to improve the coaches in order to improve the players." Why Sally asked, "was this not addressed before?" Why not give leagues the power to run things correctly. After some mumbling answers we finally got a straight answer from them.... "If all leagues were run like SELKENT, we would not be here tonight". Which really beggars the question, why not put SELKENT up as an example of how to run a league, instead of replacing with something that may not work.

It is easy to criticise. Most clubs were wrong when they were against mini-soccer, so the FA may be right. The Level 1 and Level 2 courses run by the FA are fantastic and make for better coaches, which mean happier children. The newly introduced "Youth module" courses improve on an already excellent range offered by the FA.

Some of the proposals for the game sound good.. Breakaway areas is in my humble opinion a good idea; Most seven year olds can do goal kicks no longer than the penalty area. Being able to pass to an unmarked defender could work.

Some of the proposals sound good in practice; A shared training session between both teams before the game being one. But this is asking for extra commitment and time from the parents, especially if there is more than one child in the family, and access to "grass" which may not be available. I understand these changes are being done proposed for the good of the kids, but parents are needed to bring their children to the game.

At Welling Wanderers we offer highly subsidised and free training, Goalkeeper training, coaching courses, training equipment for new teams and funding for new referee training. We rely on funding from a couple of sources to do this. Will this funding still be available or be diverted to pay for these changes.

Why not address some of the big issues first:

Full size pitches are too big for 11 to 13 year olds. Give the funds for intermediate pitches and goals.

• Give teams the option to play 9-a-side
• Police parents better from the start. They need to know that bad behaviour on the sideline is unacceptable from day one.
• Look at how "well run" leagues do things, and copy them.
• Stop leagues allowing teams to sign an unlimited number of players. I have mentioned to one non London youth league that I saw ten subs for a 12 year old game. Their chief executive came back to us and said "he saw nothing wrong in this." Kids should be playing football.

Alan Clarke read this article and sent us some of the questions he wanted to ask.

http://www.welling-wanderers.co.uk/your_kids_your_say_alan_clarke