5 Things I’ve Learned Managing A Youth Football Team.

How a rash decision in the pub one lunchtime made me friends, forced me to get fit, made me rage against the FA and means I play a small part in getting 125 kids every week to get off the sofa and play FIFA. In real life.

1. I thought other people did it.

Four years ago my son’s u10s football team was about to fold. The two previous managers, a couple of football mad teenagers, had reluctantly given it up. And who could blame them? Not many lads can or want to find the time to run 30 training sessions a year with 15 or so boisterous Year 7s on cold, wet Monday nights in winter. Even fewer want to get out of bed on Sunday mornings to drive all over Sussex to watch a team play league matches for which the word “drubbing” was invented. And nobody wants to spend hours filling out incomprehensible website forms with stats to avoid the club getting petty fines from the FA. (We once had to cough up £20 because I’d listed only 8 players on our team sheet when there should have been 9. Thanks FA.)

I used to be a rubbish football Dad. When I dropped my lad off at training I sometimes sat there perched on a wall reading the paper, drinking tea out of a flask instead of looking up watching him play. He once abandoned football altogether for a few months because he was so angry at my disinterest.

For some reason it had never occurred to me that the confident coach over there articulating the merits of 4–5–1 to gangly 15 year olds, another handing out bags of kit, balls and jackets from his van, and a bloke in a club jacket grumpily hoovering up mud in the club house were actually just other Dads helping out years after putting themselves forward. Mere volunteers. I think I must have thought there were legions of trained managers and coaches out there kicking their heels just waiting for the call up.

So I was perplexed at being called to the Horns Lodge for a pint with other parents a few years back to discuss the future of the under 10s. Was a new manager going to be revealed? Actually the chat was a bit more mundane. The shortlisted candidates for the job were in fact the parents who’d bothered to turn up for this drink in the pub. Me included. This is all you need to do said the chairman, and manager of the U15s, and fixtures secretary. Mostly something to do with bibs, cones and sending out a few emails. We all then started fidgeting and offering up reasons why we couldn’t possibly. Our fitness, “haven’t played football for years”, jobs, weekends and injuries we didn’t like to talk about. And then a sigh of relief all round. Some fool in a quiet voice finally, got down off the wall, put down the paper and said “I’ll do it, for a few weeks…until we find someone else”. That fool was me and we never did find anyone else. I’ve now being doing it for four years.

2. You don’t spend that much time coaching or watching football.

I did once spend a weekend in Brighton sitting in a secondary school classroom for the first time in thirty years with other Dads and teenage lads to earn a Level 1 football coaching qualification. “I hope you’re going to wear football boots tomorrow” scorned the instructor who taught me, over a few hours, to be an expert at running pass and move drills like “Traffic Lights” and “Round the Clock”.

Now I often fret over our formation, and even rather sadly resort to a mini whiteboard sometimes where I discuss our starting XI with my fellow coaches/helpers but endless hours in the dressing room (we don’t have one anyway) debating the merits of tiki taka versus a counter attacking compact midfield style versus the classic 4–4–2 it’s certainly not.

Actually what I quickly learned was you can spend Saturday nights ringing up random phone numbers trying to find a emergency referee. You discuss the annual Lads v Dads match in an empty pub on a Wednesday night, with the rest of the committee (aka other volunteers) and pick the numbers for the club lottery — First prize: £36.50. You spend Sunday mornings with a spade and a leaky bucket filling in rabbit holes with the mud from molehills. You learn how to mark out a football pitch with string, diluted paint and the use of right angles. You sit at your kitchen table in August with a pair of scissors, dozens of passport photos, 2 jumbo Pritt Sticks and multiple forms to create your league registration cards. You then have to show these off before every match to prove to your sceptical opponents that your strapping 6ft 12 year old is still in Year 8. You can put up nets on all size of pitches but someone will keep nicking the pegs from the bag. You start every training session pumping up footballs, but will always lose one by the end. You really do cut up oranges into quarters and hand them out at half time. You’ll start to find bags of odd kit all over your house, in the shed, under the bed, and the back of the car. You send dozens of emails, texts and Facebook messages a week keeping everyone informed with dull updates usually containing the words “GAME OFF” as another weather forecast puts paid to the state of your pitch.

You basically end up running the show. The football bit and especially my son was just the excuse to get things done. Sometimes you need the “football bit” as the prompt to start anything; Writing, getting fit, making friends, and putting dog poo in a bucket pre-dawn before putting up the corner flags.

3. The shocking state of grassroots football and the neglect of the FA and the Premier League.

Games since Jan 1st: Off, Off, Off, Off, W, Off, Off, W, Off, Off, W, Off

There are over 5000 players registered in the Sussex Sunday Youth League and hundreds of teams yet many this winter have been sitting idle on Sunday mornings. I’ve ended up being the manager of a football team that doesn’t play football matches. We played at home last Sunday, nearly four months after our previous home fixture on a pitch generously dubbed “spongey”. Two of the wettest winters on record in recent seasons hasn’t helped but a recent FA survey correctly described the state of football facilities as “chronic”. Waterlogged pitches are the norm and the accepted solution; a nation committed to plastic all weather 3G pitches are a substantial £500K a pop to install, maintain and manage.

Yet. Yet. The Premier League, which has an £8bn+ set of TV contracts in its back pocket currently donates a paltry £12m a year to grassroots facilities every year. The FA, seemingly incapable of forcing a better deal, likes to portray its minimal investment as somehow something groundbreaking and its slow progress in grassroots football (the respect programme, small sized pitches/teams, not reporting results for u11s) is sadly far far too late for the lads in Sussex lying on their sofas having received an email from me entitled “GAME OFF” after I’ve trudged on the Common in the rain.

4.You really can’t do it by yourself.

Those first few coaching sessions where the parents waved goodbye, the boys gather in front of you and its 14 football mad lads expecting Mourinho but getting Eric Morecambe were the worst. How do you get them to even stand still ? I had simply no idea. It was miserable some nights.

Gradually several Dads, perhaps relieved they wouldn’t have the burden of running the entire show, started turning up in their football boots lurking. One started offering tips and was, before I knew it, taking drills with our goalkeeper. In the second season one new Dad eventually took over the warm up whilst I chatted to parents and collected money and soon started contributing more to sessions and team formations. A young lad, who’d had his fingers burnt managing a team a few years back, was happier coaching the odd session as it was someone else’s team and enjoyed, and was rather good at it, refereeing our games.

Now in my fourth year I’ve assembled a team up there with the famous boot room, or what the equivalent might be for the glorious heights of the Sussex Sunday Youth League Division 5. We occasionally argue. We’ve had the odd row. We often disagree. But they are also great friends. If it was still me, by myself, standing there alone handing out the bibs I’d have resigned. Years ago.

5. Its really not all about winning.

The Daily Mail was shocked to discover a few months back, several years after the FA had sensibly introduced it, that all U11s teams and younger were prevented from publishing the results of their league matches on the (rubbish, still not suitable for mobile in 2016) FA website and also in local newspapers.

The rather po-faced FA statement argues

“where there are one sided score lines, these can act as a disincentive to continue playing for many children.”

Now I like a win. I like a win a lot. There might have been the odd polite cheer and clap for example last Sunday when we won 4–3 with the last kick of the match. Our team is in the top 2 fighting it out to be promoted this season. I really hope we do. Yet thats not really what success is about.

When I was 11 , I was obsessed with football. I really did kick a ball about in the street, by myself, until the sun went down. I desperately wanted to play league football every weekend. My local team though, due to a lack of volunteers I guess, had trials to select players. I didn’t make it. As a result I ended up barely kicked a ball again in anger for thirty years.

So many years later I deliberately don’t turn away players, however good they might be. That changes. A poor defender at 10 years old can develop, put on a few inches and be your lynchpin box to box midfielder in a few years time.

Success for me is pretty simple. Keeping the team playing. Giving all the players a chance and enough game time every week, encouragement, some fun with their mates, perhaps even the odd new skill here and there to turn up next season and do it all over again. If I’m sitting down with the Pritt Stick on the kitchen table in August and have 16 players registered and willing to play then job done.

Jem Stone’s day job is the manager of Chailey and Newick Colts u13s, but he also finds time to be the Head of Social Media for BBC Radio and music. He is a season ticket holder at Brighton and Hove Albion FC.

If you want to help with local grassroots football , enter your postcode here and volunteer.