£11m invested in facilities in Leicester City

In another topic Oily made the following comment:
Going back to Dennis's point about teams dropping out over the years is that football has become too expensive for mens football, training pitches, and refs all add up to a lot of money for 90 minutes of football and all the grassroots money from the fa going onto the big community clubs.
Just for 2 examples the saffron lane facility offers training but st andrews get first choice at a vastly
reduced rate than anyone else due to having a kids team.
The new riverside facility is the same with g.n.g making the most out of the f.a's funding and yet again us sunday footballers pay full price again or get no use of a state of the art facility.
Until the f.a. put money into mens football the decline is here to stay.
Well the FA, City Council and NHS put £11m into football facilities in the City. How did they do it? Sites were selected, adult teams were moved off without consultation, the grounds were developed and allocated to youth teams. If the youth team had an adult team, (GNG? and St Andrews) they were lucky because they were part of a "community club". I thought adults were a part of the football community!
I made myself very unpopular at County level because of my continuous rant. The County Chairman, David Jamieson, was supportive but there was precious little support from other Leagues (CSL and HSL do not have teams based in the city).
I know through a couple of chats with a long standing colleague, who was the Project Manager, that the allocation was decided by staff at County.
I accept that the staff probably had objectives and targets laid down by FA and these were directed towards youths, ladies and minority parts of the game. The staff are largely paid by FA and so they rule the roost.
Is it a surprise that the number of adult Sunday teams went down by 102 (30%) and Saturday teams went down by 104 (also 30%) between 1995/6 and 2012/13?

This is a personal opinion and does not necessarily represent the views of the Alliance Football League

How is it here in Oz? See my next post

Aussie Owl wrote:

How is it here in Oz? See my next post

Ozzies are sports crazy, they have the land and the climate, and so things are bound to be different.
Within a 5 or 10 minute drive of where we live there are 5 sports grounds each with 2, 3, 4 or5 pitches. The changing rooms (with a kiosk selling burgers etc) and pitches are well maintained by the Council. We went to the Farmers Market this morning. Driving past the nearest ground there were two games already in progress and the time was 8 am. I have no doubt that games will continue on a back-to-back basis throughout the day (Saturday) and most of tomorrow. Adults tend to play in the afternoon. Even my local pub has its own pitch within its grounds.
We went to Newcastle last week and we came across a couple of Sports Stadia alongside the usual pitches, but they also had provision for netball/basketball with 30! courts. Don't ask about Olympic standard pools and the surf clubs at the majority of beaches.

Life is great - visitors welcome and a free tour guide is available.

which is why the English national side is in decline. In the UK we have something like 800 3G pitches - in Germany it is 5000.

Building an all singing-all dancing facility at Burton won't solve the problem, sport has to be supported at all levels through to the top. Is it any wonder we don't have huge swathes of young talented players coming through?

And I wonder what the difference in price is that is charged to play on these pitches in Germany & England??

Its ok building 3 or 4 g pitches for all the big sides gng st andrews so called community clubs have them at a greatly reduced price and first pick of times the rest of us are shagged.
We trained on saffron lane for 2 years and got kicked off cos andrews wanted it although we had a block booking.We paid 30 quid they paid 12 quid and we still they got the pitch.
Wonder why councils are losing money on leisure.

we at Humbo have been trying for years to get funding for more teams,because we, at various stages of our history have had girls,juniors and senior teams but because of the lack of pitches etc, we will never be able to move from a local family club to a so called "community club" grassroots football is a joke unless you have a voice at county fa you don't stand a chance,if I get pull up for these comments it will prove a point

Mick, as Dennis proves in his first point a voice at FA doesn't always mean a decision that you support.

The problem is a decline in adult 11v11 football is only of the part problem and can be explained by lack of faclities, increased costs, decreased in good quality coaches, lack of individuals that are prepared to run the sides.

However, the desire to put some of these things right doesn't appear to be there from all parties. I believe (from some national FA stats I have seen) that there is NOT a decline in the total numbers taking part in adult football week in week out.

A fact that I found very hard to believe, however, this includes 5v5, 6v6, 7v7, 11v11 and Futsol, so midweek leagues, league at goals, brockington college, saffron lane, indoor pitches at freemans common etc

While particaption continues to grow on this complex's our beloved 11v11 grass pitches will not improve and Sunday/Saturday football as we know it will continue to change.

Pete Mourinho wrote:

However, the desire to put some of these things right doesn't appear to be there from all parties.  I believe (from some national FA stats I have seen) that there is NOT a decline in the total numbers taking part in adult football week in week out.  

A fact that I found very hard to believe, however, this includes 5v5, 6v6, 7v7, 11v11 and Futsol, so midweek leagues, league at goals, brockington college, saffron lane, indoor pitches at freemans common etc

At a County meeting just before I left, the Chief Exec reported that the number of adult teams was continuing to increase. Keeping a straight face, the Senior, District and Alliance Leagues challenged the figures and the massaging was revealed. Including the likes of GOALS is not helpful. Denial is not a good start to solving a problem.

It is compulsory for all 11v11 adult teams to enter County competitions.
93/94 - 351 Saturday teams and 234 in 2012/13
97/98 - 365 Sunday teams and 243 in 20012/13

I circulated theses figures annually from 93/94 to County President, County Chairman and Chief Executive with little reaction.

Draw your own conclusions.

Noticed a tweet yesterday from the Leics FA that have have access to 6 FA Coaches/mentors. These will be made available to community clubs.

There are a number a non community clubs that would benefit a lot more from this free service