School sport how does it affect youth club football

[ant powder]

This could well be a can of worms here thats being opened.

But how do people involved with youth footy in the county feel school rugby, football etc affects youth club football.

I understand the rules; that school sport has to take proirity over club sport, but every week we get players injured through school sport is this just a fact of life and players could get injured anywhere, or do you feel there maybe reasons.

Your thoughts please ????

[Dudas]

Coming from a PE teachers point of view its is just down to a fact of life. Obviously we strongly encourage students to take part in a variety of sports at school not just for our sakes of having teams and school image, but also for the personal development of youths.

In any sport you are under risk of injury it is just one of the risks we all accept when playing. Also coaching in the community i understand the flip side losing players through injury to school fixtures is annoying but is one of the many things out of your control, most of the youths that you speak to though are very proud to be playing for the school teams, finding the experience rewarding.

We are just as dissappointed when we lose players for school teams from club fixtures. It is just one of those things.

I dont believe that the injuries from school sport affect football in the community, teams are built and trained to deal with the loss of players for numerous reasons throughout a season and injuries however sustained is one of these factors.

[ant powder]

Well this week alone I have had one player with a dead leg from school footy, one has had his head stamped on from school rugby and has had to have a head scan, one with pulled tendons from school volley ball and one with heavy bruising to his left foot from school footy, So i guess they must be unlucky, like me ?

From what i have seen of school sport there are no warm ups or cool downs at all but this is from only afew schools i have seen, so i guess that some school PE departemnts are really switched on too warm ups and cool downs, you tell me ????

[Guest Peppermint]

Ant Power - you seem hyper critical of the teachers but you cannot give your user name capital letters!!!!!!

I don't think you realise the committment of the staff of schools who have to put up with all sorts of criticism but no constructive help is forthcoming.

[ant powder]

Peppermint, at what point was I crutical of teaching PE staff, I simply have stated facts from my personal knowledge and experience.

I do nt see why my personal details are important to you ? if you wish PM me with your personal details and i will do the same back too you, but this is all getting away from the subject posted, clearly i am interested in peoples thoughts on the subject posted too see what different angles people have on the subject who are involved in youth football and school football. I welcome every bodies thoughts on the subject.

I do not claim my thoughts to be right or wrong, just my thoughts.

:c:

[Guest Peppermint]

Fair enough Ant Power - but I know how hard PE teachers have to work and it is soul destroyng sometimes when people are so hypercritical!

[Dudas]

Im surprised to hear about warm ups. In my experience of school fixtures i have never seen any school fixture competed with out a warm up and neither did i compete in a school fixture without a warm up!

The injuries that you speak of are more down to bad luck than the event of a school fixture. Pupils HAVE to take part in sport in school these injuries could of easily have occured then. It just seems unlucky that it was during school fixtures.

There is no end to this discussion as the role of schools in young players developments apart from it will continue to happen. The more honest question from my experience is does youth football affect school football! I believe this to be a yes!

[Grant]

As a teacher, my groups will always warm up and ALL the fixtures I attend, I see kids doing their own warm ups. I would like to think that school sport may be responsible in some shape or form for getting young players to a good standard of playing through thier 2 hours of PE a week from primary schools, working on fitness, SAQ co-ordination etc At times the injuries may be of no fault of the school but down to the behaviour of the pupil. School sport is important in the development of talent and unfortunately injuries will and do occur, we all have different interests for these pupils which are not always the best for the pupil. I hope that local clubs support school clubs and would encourage their players to participate in school sport.

[ant powder]

Peppermint, Dudas and grant I salute you all for the time you spend as PE teachers, which I think you are ? reading between the lines of your text.

In my experience I never see school sport warm ups and its good too see you guys are doing them. Being a PE teacher is a vocation and not just a job. I guess my experiences are based on poor standards of practice that I have seen. There are bound to be poor PE teachers as well as good ones. That also applies to club coaches who give there time for the community for Free, I have seen some coaches who i would not leave my pet goldfish with let alone my child. This can be level 2 coaches with charter standard clubs. The really sad thing here is that parents have choices here, if the parents are not happy then they could take the child away from that team and or club, but that does nt always happen and that can make the child unhappy. Youth football should be about enjoyment be it in school or club.

Dudas your question is " The more honest question from my experience is does youth football affect school football! I believe this to be a yes! "

Please why yes?

Outside of school hours children play sport for there schools, resulting on many ocassions that club football suffer on our training nights, when we regulary have 6+ players missing through out of hours school sport, you may say try moving your training night, well have tryed that one afew times, but then school sport moves there day for rugby or footy.

Your right nothing will change, but we could get to understand both sides to this subject, I am not surprised that I am the only club coach to speak out, because others I have heard from moan about the subject all the time but also know nothing will change. I would like to point out that i have and will not, ever stop a child or advise a child not to play school sport.

If anything this subject will relieve the battering of refs on this forum every single week. Refs who get paid very little for the work they put in and no I am not a ref, before anyone asks.

[Guest Peppermint]

Ant Power - what a great posting. Dudas and Grant are indeed dedicated a well repsected PE teachers who put a tremendous amount into their jobs. I was a teacher who did some PE teaching but got of the education system and took early retirement and followed other interests.

There is indeed good and bad teachers as well as other professions have different standard workers but the majority of teachers especially PE teachers give up a lot of their own time in furthering their pupils knowledge and skills.

The two people mentioned also get involved with coaching etc at Clubs as well. After that endorsement can I expect a pint from the two in the Clubhouse tomorrow evening!!!!!!!!!!

[Dudas]

Ant Powder it sums the whole situation up when we have to talk about both sides. You are correct in thinking i am a PE teacher but im also a coach. The question and answer was just highlighting the fact that the loss of players to club training and club injuries effects our school turn outs and players available for selection as well as at club level.

Asking people to move training nights an so fourth is never going to work and is not fair. The problem at school comes from the amount of clubs that players play for, each player often holding there club coaches word as law. Trying to get a team of players to mix from different clubs is very difficult as each has there own veiws on how they should be playing the game. The amount of times you hear my coach says this is unreal. The lack of respect shown across the barrier(why its become like this i dont know) is unbelievable as well. Working on both sides i have seen it. Last Year i had a coach at a school game turning round and shouting what the f**k would you know your a teacher, all because one of his clubs golden boys was not on the pitch. Isolated incident? the more and more of youth football i see sadly its not.

The best soultion would be to combine the 2 which works succesfully all over the world. School fixtures are played at the weekends, players play for the school they attend. The need for external coaches is still in massive demand and the role of a PE teacher is still required. The demand on parents would lower as they are not rushing to get the kids from school to training. This i dont think will ever happen, but is a very successful system thats working.

The way forward is for schools and clubs to become in closer contact with one another and work on an equal goal. Im currently seeing Rugby clubs provide players and coaches to help with school rugby, it would be nice to see this happen with football after christmas.

We all want the same thing, kids having the opporunity to play sport and enjoy themselves. Getting rid of this them and us would hopefully benefit all, and the effects on both sides like injuries would be seen as a fact of life not poor practice.

[Martin McHugh]

It would be a great idea to "combine" school and clubs but I think the problem would be staffing issues at the weekend to look after pupils playing for school teams.

There are no easy solutions to the problems with conflicts between school and club.

I often had to contend with pupils notes excusing them from PE because they had either been injured at the weekend (again) or, even worse, excusing them because they had an important game to play at the weekend and didnt want to risk injury!!!!!

School club links are fantastic but MUST include parents and coaches.

[YoungPercy]

The way forward is for schools and clubs to become in closer contact with one another and work on an equal goal. Im currently seeing Rugby clubs provide players and coaches to help with school rugby, it would be nice to see this happen with football after christmas.

Thisis what needs to be done but how many football coaches that dont already do this actually have enought ime to do this, as most coaches have another job.

There are new initiatives coming in as well as the new National Curriculum which will provide schools with a greater choice of sports that they can coach.

Is it a matter of the coaches or is it the facilities, i believe that in cornwall there are many good coaches but it is again whether they have enough time to go into schools during or after the school day to coach, and also many schools in cornwall dont actually have top quality facilities.

any other opinions on this??

[Tommy Matthews]

In my time at school I have rarely known any boy or girl want to stop playing their school sport because of club commitments. Most of the kids love representing their school and see it as an honour. I also know of many of the parents of kids we teach make a special effort to try to get their kids in at our school because of the strength of school sport and the emphasis we place on it.

By playing school sport the players also get a certain amount of kudos and respect from their peer group by being in the team.

Who's to say that teachers know less about a certain sport than club coaches?

In our school we have 3 Level 3 coaches from different sports and an athletics coach who still runs for the GB Seniors Team. We have a female PE teacher who not only represented her country as an athlete but played football for Aston Villa Ladies. We have another who plays national league hockey.

Does that sound like people who don't know what they're doing?

[YoungPercy]

Obviously your school Tommy is very lucky to have the quality of teachers or the facilities that tyour school must have with those teachers in place.

This is very different to many schools. When i was at school we had pretty poor facilities but very good teachers, especailly within football as we had Graeme Allen and Tony Roberts who are both quality football coaches and both played at a very high standard Tony in Particular

[ant powder]

Tommy your a legend, yes you are very lucky to have the excellent PE sport staff at your school incuding yourself "a football development officer". I know which school you teach at, I have 2 lads in the club U16's team I coach who go to your school and I know the excellent coaching and facilities you have. Plus the coaching has rubbed off on them.

If only the same could be said for all schools.

The School my son goes to, have little idea of football.

If your into rugby then your face fits if you know what I mean. I have wanted to help out with football in this school but I have got the cold shoulder from PE staff in the past. It that "as and them" thing again I guess.

Saying that a new young lad has started work at the school, this lad who is not a trained PE teacher, but as come into the school and has made major improvements in the school football teams. This is a lad who only 5 years ago was a pupil of this school and he has come back to the school as a member of staff and has brought into the school football, his knowledge gained by being a player through his youth and now senior football clubs he has played for.

Young percy I gree Tony Roberts is a good footy coach, I do not know Graham though

You are right most school facilities are poor, some have rubbish pitches, some have no corner flags, footballs that have no leather left on them, and I have even seen wood square goal posts, now if clubs were using these then we would be in alot of trouble and some school PE staff have no idea of football.

Of course there are schools in the county who have excellent PE staff and facilities.

:c: