2021 Premier Club SAP

[Bremsstrahlung]

How do the kids feel? Would a little comp over a weekend or 2 at the end make them happy? Is that something they’d like to do?

Devils advocate, can it be a worse idea than the cage matches?
Only 1-2 weeks of the program, at the end. Bit of fun for the kids. Parents get to go to work the next day and pop on their local forum and tell us who won.

I’d be interested to see it trialled with maybe the 2 older age groups. Argument being that it’s a bit of a competitive environment to help them prepare for competitive matches in NPL Youth. Would also be good to see, and would potentially validate the no points/scores approach to this development/elite league. If clubs stick to their fundamentals and try to play out as they normally would, it could be good. If they resort to sticking 2 players high and long ball to them or the game being a mess, it kind of validates the idea to not score and compete for points. (Would you even introduce the concept of offside? Just to delineate it from what they’ve been doing)

Think there’s more reasons not to do it, kind of sends mixed messages too. But, not the worst idea.

It’s an interesting point as to the purpose of this comp/league/kick around. If it’s about their football development and journey, then on paper, I wouldn’t be opposed to some kind of hybrid set of rules between SAP and NPL youth. Eg maybe introduce offside in the older groups. An attempt to prepare and transition them to NPL. (Do many teams “exploit” offside? Would there be many offsides in a game as is?

Or do we not really have a problem going from small fields, no offside, no points etc to big field, offside rules, points. Let NPL a youth clubs educate their players in pre-season.