Grassroots Football and Politics

[Colonial]

Interesting article.

Somehow Union gets the most funding...

https://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/...l/news-story/85e94d5e4ce5d6dbdcfa9afc62e73add

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[giggler99]

Interesting article.

Somehow Union gets the most funding...

https://www.heraldsun.com.au/sport/...l/news-story/85e94d5e4ce5d6dbdcfa9afc62e73add

Sent from my SM-G960F using Tapatalk

Paywall!


But Imagine if the fees to join some of these junior clubs where cheaper maybe we will actually find the next Harry Kewell and Mark Viduka and a lot of those kids wouldn't be forced to give up at age 15/16. Instead kids are falling through the cracks because their parents can't afford to pay, not only for club registration fees which than goes on to fund senior teams (which is a disgrace in itself) but also for private coaching and clinics.
Just Yesterday a friend of mine who's son is a gun youth player in our local league just told me that he will be pulling him out because the cost to advance his skills would have cost him in excess of $2000! on top of the basic registration fees. It's a joke and something should be done about it. Imagine how many kids are in the some situation and have been forecd to given football (soccer) up or turned to another sport just because it was to expensive.

 

[Colonial]

Paywall!


But Imagine if the fees to join some of these junior clubs where cheaper maybe we will actually find the next Harry Kewell and Mark Viduka and a lot of those kids wouldn't be forced to give up at age 15/16. Instead kids are falling through the cracks because their parents can't afford to pay, not only for club registration fees which than goes on to fund senior teams (which is a disgrace in itself) but also for private coaching and clinics.
Just Yesterday a friend of mine who's son is a gun youth player in our local league just told me that he will be pulling him out because the cost to advance his skills would have cost him in excess of $2000! on top of the basic registration fees. It's a joke and something should be done about it. Imagine how many kids are in the some situation and have been forecd to given football (soccer) up or turned to another sport just because it was to expensive.

Sorry mate


FFA to lobby for funding increase to save grassroots football

Emma Kemp and Tom Smithies, The Daily Telegraph

February 18, 2019 9:15pm



It’s the sport played by more children across Australia than any other — but too often on pitches that are unlit, undrained and overused.

Now, with grassroots football bursting at the seams, a concerted lobbying campaign is to begin at all levels of government seeking to bridge a $500m funding gap by adding and improving hundreds of pitches across the country.
As association officials put caps on registration numbers due to a shortage of appropriate facilities, new research has revealed the backlog of upgrades and investment that means an average of more than 300 players using each pitch in some areas.

Football Federation Australia officials will begin a tour of state and the federal governments this week, armed with an audit of facilities across the country and aiming to show the code is under-resourced compared with its rivals.
As it stands, football receives $37 of government funding per participant while each rugby participant gets $113, NRL $110, AFL $109 and cricket $55.
The windfall from broadcast revenue reveals an even greater discrepancy, with each football participant getting $34 and each NRL counterpart receiving a whopping $1,539.

The Football NSW audit showed more than 350,000 players are registered to play football across NSW this year, on 2,284 pitches — each of which is played on by an average of 155 players.
According to the data, a third of pitches have no lighting, while almost half have no drainage and/or irrigation, leading to significant numbers of training sessions and matches cancelled in bad weather.
But of equal concern is the lack of new pitches to cater for increased demand, with participation numbers for football rising every year.
Female football numbers in particular are rising by 8 per cent per year, but local officials say they have nowhere to house the extra players.

“I don’t have enough fields to play on,” said general manager of the Sutherland Shire Football Association Jeff Stewart.
“We do have an eligibility requirement to register to play football in Sutherland Shire — you must be a resident, presently going to school there or have played for one of our clubs in the past.
“If we had 20,000 players I would suggest we may have to start turning away local residents.”

They’re not far short off that threshold now.
Last year the Shire had 18,692 — of which about one-third were female — squeezed onto 61 fields at an average of 306 players per field.
Some of those fields are under-utilised because of the steep financial outlay required to make them more playable.

“We have one field, for example, where the goalkeeper’s feet at one end are higher than the goalkeeper’s head at the other end,” Stewart said.
“We play games on that field — we have to, because we have to play games on every bit of green grass we can.”
Inquiries have been made about levelling it out and refurbishing another smaller one next to it, but the association has been quoted about $4 million because of nearby sewage and stormwater lines.

Similar problems have long been festering in the Canterbury district, where decades of neglect in Sydney’s chock-a-block inner west has left structurally unsound facilities and outdated amenities, particular catering for female participation.

Canterbury District Soccer Football Association chief executive Ian Holmes said his board has been discussing capping registrations at a total 17,000 across the 27 clubs.
“It’s not a matter of if it’s going to happen, it’s going to start this year because there’s no more space,” Holmes said.
“The infrastructure cannot cope.
“We’re really jammed in, and given the neglect and lack of capital invested in community sporting facilities the fields start to deteriorate.
“Therefore the clubs have to say they can’t take anymore. They’re basically at the point where they have to do it because there’s no more space.”



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[burge13]

Paywall!


But Imagine if the fees to join some of these junior clubs where cheaper maybe we will actually find the next Harry Kewell and Mark Viduka and a lot of those kids wouldn't be forced to give up at age 15/16. Instead kids are falling through the cracks because their parents can't afford to pay, not only for club registration fees which than goes on to fund senior teams (which is a disgrace in itself) but also for private coaching and clinics.
Just Yesterday a friend of mine who's son is a gun youth player in our local league just told me that he will be pulling him out because the cost to advance his skills would have cost him in excess of $2000! on top of the basic registration fees. It's a joke and something should be done about it. Imagine how many kids are in the some situation and have been forecd to given football (soccer) up or turned to another sport just because it was to expensive.

The cost of junior soccer is a disgrace in this country. The reason soccer is so popular the world over is it's low cost of entry. You only need a ball. Look at the African countries, or Brazil has produced many a player with next to no facilities because all they do is play.

How many kids with serious potential have we lost because parents (rightly) chose school fees over soccer fees? No junior club should be charging more than a few hundred per kid; what is the justification for charging more? It's a disgrace

 

[giggler99]

The cost of junior soccer is a disgrace in this country. The reason soccer is so popular the world over is it's low cost of entry. You only need a ball. Look at the African countries, or Brazil has produced many a player with next to no facilities because all they do is play.

How many kids with serious potential have we lost because parents (rightly) chose school fees over soccer fees? No junior club should be charging more than a few hundred per kid; what is the justification for charging more? It's a disgrace

The Justification is like I've mentioned above it goes toward paying for the senors squads as welll as administrators and in the FFV coffers. All these paticipation numbers and fees but I don't really see much improvement in skills or facilities. When the game is funded from the bottom up its a real concern and its been happening for a long time and nothing will change unless the game starts to prospers at the top.

 

[nobbyiscool]

The Justification is like I've mentioned above it goes toward paying for the senors squads as welll as administrators and in the FFV coffers. All these paticipation numbers and fees but I don't really see much improvement in skills or facilities. When the game is funded from the bottom up its a real concern and its been happening for a long time and nothing will change unless the game starts to prospers at the top.

The Crawford report gets lauded for the way it progressed Australian football - particularly the establishment of the FFA and indirectly the establishment of the A-League.

But the way it ignored the funding of junior football - and in fact normalised the current funding scam - was an enormous failure.

I know we're between a rock and a hard place because the game needs money, but we don't have sponsors or broadcasters that fund the sport to create the top-down funding model that exists in every major footballing nation. With that said though, the way we accept this bottom-up funding model where kids' registration fees are paying for club semi-professionals is a ******* outrage, and I can't believe it's been allowed to go on for the past 20 years since it really became the norm (or at least since it was brought to public attention.)