Posted by Pitchero.com |
9th October 2012 | 15 Comments
St. George's Park - What's in it for grassroots clubs?
St. George’s Park, England’s new £100 million training complex, is set to be opened today by the Duke & Duchess of Cambridge. But what does it mean for grassroots game?
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The 300 acre complex will be the training base for all England teams and a centre of excellence dedicated to increasing the number of quality coaches and managers.
The FA are also using this as an opportunity to implement changes in youth football which include smaller pitches and goal size.
Here are some images from St. George's Park:
• 12 pitches - Indoor, outdoor and an exact replica of the Wembley pitch
• Sports medicine centre & human performance lab
• Strength & conditioning gym
• Health club & spa
Gary Neville believes that St George’s Park will be a great location for England players to train, but thinks that the dedicated coaching facilities can make a real long-term difference. "I think we can produce a lot more players if we had better coaches. This facility is an absolutely incredible opportunity for our great coach educators to deliver better courses, more courses. I’m overwhelmed by the quality that I’ve seen.”
However, many are arguing that the new complex is not the answer to England’s troubles, and that the £100 million may have been better invested elsewhere.
What do you think? Will St. George’s Park improve the state of grassroots football in England, or is this an elitist complex which will simply increase the gap between grassroots football and those at the top?
Where would you like to have seen The FA invest that £100 million?
The FA are also using this as an opportunity to implement changes in youth football which include smaller pitches and goal size.
Here are some images from St. George's Park:
• 12 pitches - Indoor, outdoor and an exact replica of the Wembley pitch
• Sports medicine centre & human performance lab
• Strength & conditioning gym
• Health club & spa
Gary Neville believes that St George’s Park will be a great location for England players to train, but thinks that the dedicated coaching facilities can make a real long-term difference. "I think we can produce a lot more players if we had better coaches. This facility is an absolutely incredible opportunity for our great coach educators to deliver better courses, more courses. I’m overwhelmed by the quality that I’ve seen.”
However, many are arguing that the new complex is not the answer to England’s troubles, and that the £100 million may have been better invested elsewhere.
What do you think? Will St. George’s Park improve the state of grassroots football in England, or is this an elitist complex which will simply increase the gap between grassroots football and those at the top?
Where would you like to have seen The FA invest that £100 million?
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In local football clubs in need of development. This isn't going to make a difference to the england players, it's just the FA flashing the cash, selfish bastards...
There's no doubting that SGP is a fantastic facilty and will probably improve the current England setup but I do think that the money would have been more beneficial if it had been invested at grassroots level, particually in developing facilities and pitches.
My son's team have had 3 (out of 5) games postponed already this season because of waterlogged pitches and it's still only early October!
How are our youngsters supposed to develop when they are not playing games or playing on pitches that are ankle deep in mud?
In my opinion not eniugh support is given to youth and am clubs.Council pitches are a joke.Increased prices and they cant manage to cut and mark them half the time.As long as am teams pay extortionate amounts of fines grass roots football is just a pipe dream...
Agree with the above. From my experience with my daughter, there seem to be plenty of football pitches but very few with proper drainage. In yorkshire it was normal to have half the season called off and play into late May I play alot of cricket and the experience is the same. The money goes to the top of the pyramid for "team england", subsidising counties with very little finding it's way down to meaningful grass roots projects. Even then you have to go through hoops to get funding. This project doesn't make more people play football, which is what it should all be about.
Exactly Nick.In Bradford it is the norm for teams to `FOLD` as the season progresses.The Committee for the League do a sterling job with many ours work.Only this season before it started at least 3-4 teams folded.I reckon it costs us at least £1000 each season before we even kick a ball.!!Another bug bare with the FA is at Am Sunday morning football level you are expected to video every game so in the event of a dispute of say mistaken identity you have grounds for protest.Oh that's after you pay for the privilege to protest.Just take player fines for eg. The club are liable for ALL Fines then have to chase players for reimbursement.Not that easy when at the end of the season they just go and sign for some other team.Yes you can get the FA to chase them for it but yes you guessed it YOU HAVE TO PAY for the privilege...Thats my 2 penath worth...
Hey tell you what guys, come to Brighton & Hove. We have the only Green council in the Country and they cannot stand football. We all pay £70 per match for a pitch on a hill and sub standard changing rooms.
I've been saying for ages that the facilities at England level are satisfactory and fit for purpose. Only in this country does just 2% of the FA's income go on grassroots football and yet in Spain, Germany & Holland 60% of income has gone on regenerating sports fields and providing 3g facilities for various parts of the countries.
Can anyone tell me what is grass roots football? Until the masses vote with their feet and stop supporting profession football the FA will continue to waste money on the elite. Just imagine if everyone just for one week refused to support their team in protest. What a message that would send!
Good point Paul.FA would just increase fines at am level..!Only today i received an email from Bradford Sunday League stating that yet another team has FOLDED...years ago we had 12 divisions in the Bradford Sunday Alliance F.L. now they have just drop another division for this season that makes 8 divisions left.What next season down to 7 or maybe 6 ?? are they not getting the message there is no such support for grass roots.It sumed it up for me when it was announced that the new St Georges could be hired to any team.Only £350 per hour..Think i`ll have to put match day subs up to cover it ..!
Pretty sick really but that's how it seems to go. What happens is that there will be pockets of people like us moaning as we do :0) Faceless big organisations can handle that weather from the FA to the Government the only way is to stay away till they address the real issues of the UK
A multi-million pound establishment for multi-millionaires. About as useful to me as a chocolate fire-guard. The first thing I check for on a match day is dog poo, not where the sauna is. Oh well, someone's ticked a box anyway, albeit a rather large and expensive one.
I took my team to Holland last Summer. I was frankly embarrassed when comparing the facilities we sadly have to endure to what even average sized Dutch junior clubs offer their kids. Shameful. Really shameful.
Yes 30 years ago i went to play in Germany , Belgium & Holland as part of an under 16 team.The facilities way back then were outstanding.30 years on this country is still way behind in developing so called grass roots football.I second the Dog poo fact.The lack of respect from every day dog walkers & public in general is quite frankly disgusting.I`ve had people letting there dogs mess on the pitch within minutes of both teams entering the changing rooms.When confronted a swift flick of the bird and a few choice words was the only reply we got from these morons.
£100 million pound on the complex will it succeed or not time will tell.
However it has no impact in my eys on grass route football only on the elite - the players who are with professional clubs in their academies are the only ones really who can work to this level.
Next season the club I am chairman off will have over 20 teams in various age groups from U5 to adult both male and female junior and adults 300+ playing members. I am now working on plans to ensure that I have pitches NOT for this season but for the 2013/14 seasons as both the councils are already stretched in available pitches. It is becoming a big problem. There was this big study work funding process about saving pitches, as anyone seen this actually happen, in South Yorkshire we are seeing more and more council land being sold to fund deficits in council budgets. Surely it is better to get professional clubs to pay for a center their players may benefit from and ensure grass route football survives in England to create the players to get there.
It is getting worse for available pitches not better and I can not see it improving until the people at the top stop thinking about just the England team directly and look at how to improve everything accross the board only then will English football improve.
I wish they would stop thinking about the top 1%. Better facilities in the community may increase the number of available players for clubs as coaches will have the tools to coach at a young age and keep players interested and stop the decline in the number of people continuing to play football in the future
Can't say I disagree with any of the other comments on here. I think SGP will benefit English Football in the future, but as everyone else has said - not enough is done at grassroots level.
From my own point of view - my club play at Step 7, we are linked to a youth set up with over 30 teams and a Ladies team too and yet there is only 3 grass pitches in our Town. Two are on school grounds and the other has no available changing facilities.
We were denied promotion to Step 6 last season because the 3G pitch we were playing on didn't meet the FIFA One-Star standard for Artificial Turf. This standard is such that International fixtures can be played on it - we only wanted to play at Step 6!!! The pitch was constructed before the standard came in, so we were turned down for promotion by the FA and are now paying a ridiculous amount to groundshare outside the Town again to give us a chance of winning promotion again this season with half of last season's title-winning squad having departed.
I'm sure there are many other clubs that have been in a similar situation and our local FA held a seminar asking why numbers playing Senior Football on a Saturday are dwindling!?
No facilities means no progress and if there is no progress it makes all the hours we put in pretty worthless.
England will never win anything again,not in my lifetime anyway,we are not skilled enough.Any skills our youngsters have are coached out of them.
Professional players are only in it for one thing and it shows in their mediocre performances.
The game has changed and England have been left behind the likes of Spain,Germany,Portugal, etc.
Watch out for the African nations,they will soon be a force in world football and look at their training facilities,zero,but what they have is natural skills,passion and dreams.
The money should have gone to grass root football where it is needed and where it would be more appreciated and not used in such a disgusting manner. The dog poo factor just about sums up the general feeling.
Who will be using this venue,a load of jumped up suits on a flipping jolly.Bollocks.
Unfotunately, to the common man and those involved in amateur sport, grass roots means something completely different to the governing bodies. It is about time they got down and dirty at 'real' grass roots level, they then may have some empathy for all the comments being posted!
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