Ive been thinking a lot about their decision, yesterday, to pull £1.6 million from the FAs funding for grassroots football. At first, and ive so many criticisms of them, I was angry with the FA themselves. I thought, well theyve plenty of money anyway, they can make up the shortfall. Then the more I thought about it I realised that it is a massive kick in the teeth for all the lads, and lasses, that get up on a Cold, Wet winters sunday morning, possibly still a little hung over from the night before, to go out and pay to play on pitches that arent fit for Cows to graze on, Changing rooms that dont get used any more.
In these days of obesity, lack of excercise etc. we should be doing, as a nation, more to encourage people to participate in sport, not less surely.
Anyway an excellent article by Henry Winter, in the Telegraph, who can say all this far better than I can.
Quote:
Arsène Wenger travelled to a rural village in France a few years back honouring a promise to a relative to open a new pitch. The facilities were first-class, the Arsenal manager recalled, and the state also provided funding for two coaches to develop the skills of the village schoolchildren of varying ages.
Wenger’s story came to mind following Sport England’s petty decision to deny the Football Association £1.6 million of funding for grass-roots football because of a decline in adult participation levels.
Sport England’s chief executive, Jennie Price, a lawyer, lectured the FA on how it should do better, ignoring that football contends with years of government neglect of facilities and targets five-to-11-year-olds more than adults.
For all its association with athletics and the Olympics, and its historic reputation for looking down on football, Sport England does a lot of good for the national game, contributing considerable sums, but it should be giving more, not undermining important FA initiatives.
Price will place the £1.6 million penalty fee in a headline-seeking scheme called the “City of Football” outside the FA’s remit. So there.
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Sport England is doing all this as a “warning” to the FA to improve participation levels, particularly in adult 11-a-sides. Cricket, badminton and rugby union also saw declines but escaped debits to their funding, although they were put “on notice”. How that must hurt.
The FA undeniably has many faults. Its disciplinary system is discredited, a fact confirmed by its failure to appeal against the lax five-game ban on Nicolas Anelka for his anti-semitic quenelle through a fear of lawyers.
It made a catastrophic decision in rebuilding Wembley, a move backed by Sport England, when the money should have been used to nourish grass-roots.
The FA can do more for grass-roots but it does much that is missed by the patronising politicos of Whitehall. Driven by director of national game Kelly Simmons, the FA works hard in the incredibly complex sphere of grassroots, encouraging access to coaching badges (still over-priced), funding and legitimising 3G pitches and sending 158 full-time skills coaches to 44 counties helping school pupils let down by repeated government cutbacks.
Simmons, a stoic who just gets on uncomplainingly with improving football, has to deal with a raft of problems bequeathed by government myopia. Local authorities face a financial squeeze so council facilities suffer or fees are hiked.
Parents regularly and rightly complain of shoddy dressing rooms and badly-maintained pitches. Many playing fields have been sold off. Some are hampered by drainage issues accentuated by building on flood plains.
Simmons and her grass roots staff have spent weeks dealing with the logistical nightmare of a backlog of waterlogged matches. And then they get this kick in the teeth from representatives of a political establishment partly culpable for the nation’s below-par facilities that would not be tolerated in Wenger’s homeland.
Sport England declared “we’ve funded 484 football clubs” over the past three years. There are 27,500 clubs that the FA has a responsibility for. It is a huge sport with many problems that will not be solved by £1.6 million barbs.
When Price’s “City of Football” rises, doubtless with countless politicians preening in front of the cameras, her organisation will generously be “sharing the insight with the FA to help it grow the game”. A lawyer whose career has mainly been spent in the construction and recycling industries seems to think she knows more than Simmons, a member of the Uefa grass-roots panel awarded MBE for services to football in 2002.
Sport England should be working closely with the FA, not belittling it. Together they could use the power of football to help defuse the time-bomb of childhood obesity threatening the NHS.
At the same time as Price was having her pop at football, England’s chief medical officer, Dame Sally Davies, was urging the Government to put a tax on sugar to tackle obesity. Davies made a far greater contribution to this country’s future health on Thursday than Price.
Government does very well out of football in tourism, national image and commerce. Rather than snipe at the FA, maybe Price could persuade Government to release some of the huge sums they rake in from the £1 billion benefits to the economy whenever England qualify for a World Cup. The VAT alone would fund 800 3G public pitches of the type Wenger opened in France.
Price should really be taking on the Croesus of the Premier League, demanding it contributes even more to grass roots but it will not upset a global sporting phenomenon so useful on overseas trade missions.
Price should be highlighting the ludicrous drain from the game through agents’ fees, which rose to a record £96 million in 2013 in the Premier League alone. That’s 400 3G pitches.
Price picks the wrong battle. Sadly, sport is poorly represented in Cabinet. DCMS needs breaking up. Culture, media and sport should have their own Cabinet ministers, fighting their corners, and ordering Price to work with sports like football. It works for the French.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/foo...ots-level.html