staging the Games coming back to grassroots sport, it should be easier to acquire grant aid.
In terms of the National Governing Bodies, we think that sports like football, cricket and rugby should be more customer driven rather than slavishly following the school/club link model.
They need to be more innovative and empower local deliverers to be creative in the way that they stimulate and sustain participation. At the moment, it is too top down driven.
The other big weakness is the failure to recognise that the biggest barrier to participation is ability or the perceived lack of it. In our major team sports, if you are not considered good enough you are not selected. This means that, as only the top 25% of talented performers are picked for the teams at school and club level, a large number of enthusiastic participants of average ability or below are neglected.
The NGB’s need to engage with this untapped audience who would love to play sport, but are deemed surplus to requirements. At the LPFF, we have successfully delivered a project known as Keep on Playing Sport (KOPS), which targets 16-19 year-old males who have never represented their school or club teams, and the results have been very encouraging.
The other major step change needed is for NGBs to be more adept at realising multiple outcomes, by recognising that
the wider health and social benefits of playing sport can be huge.
Q: Under the Big Society vision, do you think that top-flight sportsmen and women should plough some of their salaries and winnings into grassroots sport. Chelsea’s John Terry recently announced that he was to help the local club where he played in his younger days. Singlehandedly, such sporting stars could save many local clubs from extinction.
Do you think that a national initiative ought to be launched, under which a set proportion of earnings was channelled into grassroots sport automatically?
A: The idea of our high-earning footballers investing a small percentage of their salary (in a tax efficient way) into grassroots sport is excellent. We have fourteen Premiership and Football League clubs in London, and most of the home grown players at these clubs started off their fledgling careers on local playing fields or play grounds.
Players and clubs should recognise the debt they owe to organisations like the LPFF and engage in some form of charitable giving. With this type of investment, support and publicity we could help safeguard the long-term future of playing fields and help to widen, increase and sustain grassroots participation.
Q: Is there scope for the general public to bequeath more money to grassroots
sport? How would such schemes work do you think?
A: Under the Big Society theme the Government is trying to reinvigorate philanthropy, which is an under tapped resource. Emerging trends in philanthropy indicate that private wealth is increasing, more people are giving within their lifetime, givers want to see the impact of their donations and, as a result, individual giving is becoming increasingly important to third sector organisations.
Some of the bigger health charities have benefited from some huge legacies and, at the LPFF, two of our senior trustees are spearheading a Legacy Giving Campaign. One big problem of this type of donation is that you cannot plan for it but, when it arrives, it comes as a nice surprise.
Startling statistics
• Twenty years ago there were 26,000 playing fields across the country. Now, there are 19,000.
• In 1990, there were 1,126 grass cricket wickets in London. By 2010, this figure had fallen by 40% to 681.
• In the Olympic borough of Tower Hamlets, there are no grass cricket wickets, for a population of 220,000.
• London has 1,500 playing fields, but very unevenly distributed. Barnet has ninety-seven, whereas the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea has four.
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