Grassroots
TURF WARS
Poor facilities and badly maintained pitches
are being blamed for steep falls in the number of people playing football in England. What can be done to save the beautiful game?
W 38
hen Sport England announced earlier this year that it was cutting grassroots funding for football, it did so with a
blunt message to the sport’s governing body, the Football Association (FA). Taking away £1.6m from the amateur game, Sport England CEO Jennie Price said the FA needed to “change its grassroots strategy” after failing to arrest a sharp decline in the number of people playing the sport. While football wasn’t the only sport to have its grassroots funding cut by Sport England, the poor state of the country’s most popular team sport ignited widespread debate over the state of the national sport.
NOT PLAYING THE GAME The cut, like each funding decision made by Sport England, was linked to participation levels. These make uncomfortable reading for the FA. Over the past six years, there has been a 9 per cent decrease in the number of adults (16-year-olds and over) playing football at least once a week – from 2.14 million in October 2007 to 1.83 million in October 2013. What makes these figures particularly worrying is that
during the same period the total number of people playing some form of sport at least once a week increased by 1.4 million – from 13.9 to 15.3 million. The FA’s general secretary Alex Horne
responded to the funding cut by saying that falls in participation were to be blamed on the poor state of facilities –
FOOTBALL FOUNDATION
The UK’s largest sports charity was set up in 2000 by the FA, the Pre- mier League and government. Since 2000 FF has awarded £500m worth of grants and has attracted a further £600m of partnership funding to- wards improving the grassroots.
made worse by cuts in local government budgets and inclement weather over the past two winters. “Grassroots football is played during winter on facilities almost exclusively owned and maintained by local authorities,” Horne says. “A combination of severe weather, increased pitch hire costs and reduced
maintenance spend has made this a very difficult time for clubs seeking to complete their fixtures and for individual players to value and enjoy regular football. This challenge – to ensure a much better provision of quality affordable grassroots facilities – is one we are determined to address.” Horne also pointed out that, although disappointing, the £1.6m reduction in Sport England funding represented a fraction of the funding the FA ploughs into grassroots. He said the cuts would not deter the FA’s “extensive financial commitment” to the grassroots of the game of which the Sport England funding was “only one element”. “It’s naturally disappointing to learn
that Sport England is cutting its funding to football especially at a time when the challenges faced by the grassroots of our game are so acute,” Horne said. “We continue to maintain investments of £1m-a-week into grassroots football. We believe this continued commitment – which in the last year has seen growth of 1,300 new youth teams formed and playing football – will enable us to transition more young players into adult football over the next four years.”
sportsmanagement.co.uk issue 3 2014 ©Cybertrek 2014
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