Grassroots Football

[sammydog]

absolutely fair point.
but what do you do about it?

because you already have clubs running SAP programs making noise that a certain couple of clubs are trying to poach their better players to bolster their squads.

But these clubs have no issues with poaching players from clubs further down the ladder. The numbers of emails we get from SAP clubs asking us to promote their trials and send players over is amazing.

They cant have it both ways.

however we want to look at it, the kids with the highest ambitions will always want to be at the clubs with the biggest ambitions.

there is one club doing SAP that is not in NPL that has a well laid out plan to get to NPL and succeed. they have done well in SAP and are hell bent on playing with the 'big boys' within 5-10 years.

you might have to ask yourself does your club have the same ambitions? because if not you cant blame anyone for walking away to the bigger shinier thing. its what we all do in life with work, partners, houses. its how humans are wired these days.

so do you go full on into 'ambition mode' in the hope of getting the kids in to kick start a revolution, or do you wait til you have the players then apply for the big show?
unfortunately, for clubs run by a lot of hard working volunteers, with limited resources the answer isnt so simple.

it wouldnt shock me if in the foreseeable future clubs merge or disappear*. Football is completely different from what is was 10 years ago, as it was 50 years before that. and it will be different again 20 years from now.

*the club i stated with no longer exists, its sad, but thats life i guess.

Which club is the non NPL/NL1 SAP club?

I agree the best kids will always seek out the big teams/clubs. But is the current set up makes it near on impossible to offer anything to compete.

We are in no danger of folding or needing to merge. Overall our junior numbers are on the rise, but it is an increase in the younger mini-roos we are seeing. Hanging onto them is the major issue. The club has a plan in place to continue our growth and we have aspirations to be a lot more than we currently are. The first thing is to try and stem the bleeding of juniors.

We know that from our U8's last season, 8 of the players have been confirmed in SAP programs for next year. Thats great that we have players developing to that point, but I would prefer to be able to offer to keep them at the club.

I realise that even if we had SAP, kids would look for the best club they could, but I also know we would be able to retain and develop a high number of our own players. And yes, the best of these would obviously end up playing NPL or NL1 and that's fine, but some would also flow into our senior system.