There are 3 divisions in the South East Counties women league for women over 18.(7*) There is an Adidas girls cup held which 16 girls teams take part in from kent held at Beechings Cross. (14* ) Gravesend & Northfleet Ladies Football Club are running an after school Girls Football Development Programme for 11 – 16 years olds of all abilities at Swan Valley community school.(19) There is a Kent FA Women’s Cup where teams women’s teams in Kent gather to play each other.(20) There is also a Sunday Premier Cup, Junior Cup and Junior Trophy for women football in Kent (21). There is a Kent Girls/Ladies Football League and a Kent Suburban Ladies Football League as well.
National Grass Roots Provision
The national lottery and Sport England will be investing £130 million in 300 primary schools to modernise or build new multi-use halls, areas that cater for a range of sports on one site, all-weather pitches. (6) In the UK 'Grass Roots' is the responsibility of the county. There are 43 County Football Associations. These organise local competitions and leagues, registering players to clubs and organising match officials and rules. They are all heavily involved with the FA. In the County Football Association it is the responsibility of the Technical director to oversee the development of football from 'grass roots' to National level. They are guided through the centres of excellence, aimed specifically at training young footballers into stars. Many of the big clubs have their own youth training facilities, for example Manchester United, Chelsea and Liverpool all have established youth centres. £3.5 million has been invested into Sportsmatch by Sport England to support 370-400 grass-roots programmes in England.(9),(10) The F.A. Charter programme ensures the best opportunities are given for the coaching and education received by young players. The F.A. run a variety of competitions for clubs at levels of the game from the F.A. challenge cup to trophies for Sunday league sides. The F.A. Sunday cup is a competition for clubs playing in Sunday leagues across the country. More than 100 teams attend and the final is held at a league ground. The F.A. County youth cup is a competition for representative youth sides of County football Associations.
Disabled footballers have the opportunity to develop from local club level to national level. There are opportunities at Grass Root Level for disabilities including: Amputees, cerebral palsy, learning disability, blind, partially blind and deaf. These six groups have a team at national level. Fifty professional clubs are delivering sessions to people with disabilities. A representative of the EFDS told me that 1.3 million pounds will be put into the program over the next three years. The FA sponsors this and supports these disabled teams with kit, medical sources, physio and funding to various tournaments. A national "Multi-Disabled Soccer Association" runs throughout the country. Chelsea football club has a very successful disabled squad who are European Champions. The creation of hundreds more specially trained Disability football coaches will boost grass roots. Funded by FA community partner McDonald's will see the number of Disability football coaches increase by 100% around England over the next four years. This will give better local and national provision for disabled participants at all levels. (11)
39 football academies are in operation. 19 football league clubs have academies as well as all the Premier league clubs. These bring together the best young players to give them quality coaching, education and medical care that gives them the best chance of success. All league clubs (except those with academies) must have centres of excellence. 53 are currently operating predominately at league clubs, offering young players high standards of training and development. Centres of excellence have been in existence for many years but the F.A. Charter for Quality programme has introduced and enhanced standards. (8*) If the players are good enough then they will be chosen to represent their country.(9*)
The Counties run all aspects of the game at local level and are backed by the FA. Approximately 40,000 football clubs in total are joined to County FA's. In the County FA the Technical director is to oversee the development of football from 'grass roots' to National level. The FA will invest £45m via the Football Foundation into facility improvement projects over the next 3 years. The Foundation is the largest sports charity in the country and has invested in 1,660 varied football projects worth a total of £390 million.(1) 'F.A Top Sport Football' is a project designed to benefit every school kid. (1*) Over the next three years the FA will invest £6 million pounds, to provide all primary and special schools with football equipment, teacher training, and resources.(2)
Nationwide is making a £750,000 investment into women’s football. This is to help to create youth set ups all over the UK and improve the coaching of women’s football.(7) 1.4 million girls have taken part in some sort of football activities on a regular basis. 65 per cent of these girls are between seven and fifteen play at least once a week. In 2001-2002 90,000 girls played competitive football.(8) The F.A are aiming to get those girls involved in regular, organised club football through the new campaign 'join a squad'. They will advertise this during the world cup initial group stages and will direct them to the re-launched F.A website. Football is now officially the biggest women's and girls sport in England. Research has shown that girls who want to play sport want to play football but just because you didn't play when you were young doesn't mean you can't play now. There are over 800 women's teams playing 11a-side competitive football every week throughout the August-May season.
Critical Analysis
Due to the limited time I had I was unable to fully investigate local and national grassroots, with more time I would have been able to gather more resources from other libraries etc. As I had limited time and money I was unable to meet the people I wanted information from, I would have otherwise gone abroad and compared English grassroots football with another country and I would have visited Gillingham football club to talk to each player individually from there and visit members of the FA. As a result of this I had to completely rely on my e-mails to speak to them and many of which were unanswered. I would have also liked to have printed questionnaires to hand out to people in my school and collect their opinions and knowledge as well as putting them through all the houses in Maidstone. However I feel that I have researched National Provision well due to the amount of different information I found.
Bibliography
http://www.secwfl.org.uk/
http://www.maidstoneunited.co.uk/youthdev.htm
Reference Page
(3) "The program can only get bigger as we have only scratched the surface, there is little support for disabled football in Kent at the moment but there are plans to talk with the regional officer in the Southeast and the local county FA to launch the program in the area.” -
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“We are pleased to give our backing to Sportsmatch which does a great job at boosting grass roots and youth sport. Sportsmatch in England is funded by the department for culture, media and sport through Sport England. It is administered by the Institute of Sports Sponsorship. In ten years Sports match has encouraged 4,000 companies to sponsor projects and have put in £75 million into grass roots” Roger Draper, the chief executive of Sport England.
- Information was given by Mickey Rice Kent sports development Officer I contacted him on 01634812032
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(24) “Hi Andrew
There are curently 5 pan-disability (junior and adult) team's in Kent.
Your nearest is Larkfield DFC - there is a link to there website, with all
club details, from the "Sports" page, under "Football", on my section of the
Unit website (address below)
I have no idea of the number of disabled people playing football across the
whole of the UK. I doubt anybody does, but your best bet is the Football
Association, Jeff Davies - National Disability Football Manager
I hope this helps
Mike Bishop”
