On every level of the football pyramid, there are challenges the teams and players have to face. Adult grassroots football is not short of issues themselves, with player shortages and less teams applying to play throughout the entirety of the season. Cheltenham Civil Service’s club president and former player, Rob Morrison gave an insight to the struggles his league and grassroots sports in the country and Gloucestershire itself have to face.
“I think that the biggest struggles are just probably around team and player numbers. So you know my experience, what I’m talking about is predominantly with the Cheltenham League, which is the sort of lowest level of the pyramid,” Morrison began to explain the issue.
“Probably 10 years ago maybe that there were probably six divisions, up to around 70 teams, I think in there. If you have a look now, that number has probably halved. And what compounds that really is you find that a number of teams enter the league with the, you know, great gusto in the sort of May, June time and large number sometimes even before the first game starts pulled out.”
Morrison also underlined that all of this could possibly be a consequence of something we could not control: a global pandemic.
“I haven’t studied it or considered it in any great detail, which factors have the biggest part, but what I’m thinking about is COVID, that undoubtably had an impact. There were a number of teams and players that just after COVID never got back into it. So COVID definitely had a part to play.”
This overnight effect not only happened because people had to quarantine over the pandemic, but because businesses such as pubs had to close. Morrison explained why that is.
“When you look at some of those teams, you had a number that were associated and named after pubs, a number that were associated and named after businesses. There’s big employers, pubs and things like that in the area all had you know, teams, some of them more than one. Businesses haven’t got the money spare for things like that.”
Embed from Getty ImagesWhile there isn’t a blueprint for a simple solution, Morrison pointed out two ways to encourage people to return to play. Working with businesses to organise teams themselves and setting up a clear route for the younger players to join the adult team once possible.
“One thing is working with businesses and understanding how they could maybe come back into it again, there’s a massive push in organizations to support, you know, employee health and well-being.
“At the club, we’ve got an Under-16 team this year. They’ve been with us for the last three or four years. Players will be coming of age this year and obviously next year they could be playing in an open age football club. One of the things that’s really important is we need to make sure we’re creating a really good pathway and working with the Under-16 manager and the players to make them feel part of the adult thing and get the players coming through. So that that’s an answer for our club.”
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Morrison also talked about the financial side of the issue, that can set a standard for the players to join in at a decent level.
“If I was going to fix it, I think thin areas that I would consider with without data, I think you’ve got to make it as accessible and affordable as possible. You’ve got to provide facilities. And places for people to play that are decent standard and decent changing routes that you know if which part of.”
