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…