Youth Football Clubs {You Are Involved With}

[Kombi Buddie]

I've noticed there are a few of us on BAWA who coach football or are involved with local youth football clubs.

My lad {Innes} joined soccer school at Romford Borough Youth this time last year & I was invited to coach the Under 8's team. I've been coaching for just over the year now & enjoying it immensely.

I've played football down here for 20 odd years [boots got hung up 3 weeks ago} but my biggest buzz was playing at Love Street in Saints Aid 1. That was relegated to 2nd best buzz when the boys recorded their 1st ever win {3-2 against Great Danes of Brentwood} & i've enjoyed every minute of it since.

Noticing there were a few who are involved with youth football, it got me thinking that with us being community spirited these days, there's great potential for ideas, suggestions, contacts, deals etc to be shared.

I started the ball rolling by PM'ing some funding streams to Stuart Dickson {they may be of use to Wishaw Wycombe Wanderers, but they may not but if you don't try} & Stuart fired back a few good ideas that I have found useful for my club.

With a few more youth football coaches treading these boards, I am confident sharing experiences, deals, ideas etc may be of benefit to more.

anyways, to get the ball rolling here's a few of the funding streams that I am currently exploring {some might no longer be available}

http://inspiredfacil...ortengland.org/

http://www.sported.o...-the-south-east

http://www.footballf...n.org.uk/apply/

http://www.sportengl..._deliverin.aspx

http://www.fundingce...idedsearch.aspx

http://www.funding4sport.co.uk/

http://www.barclaysc...portsaward.com/

http://www.sportengl...all_grants.aspx

http://www.cash-4-clubs.com/

http://www.sportengl...portsmatch.aspx

http://www.torchtrop...g/bursaries.htm

http://www.marsrefuel.com/refuel-fund/

http://www.skillsact...y_ovens_bursary

Edited May 10, 2012 by Kombi Buddie

[dani bongo]

Hi KB, I've been coaching youth football up in Shetland for a few years now and have had the time of my life taking the lads down to tournaments on the mainland. Started at u14 and now currently in charge of Shetland u18/19.

The funding for these trips is huge about £6500 to take the lads to Stirling this year and to be honest most of the money comes from the players. Tesco let us do bag packing which brings in a few quid but our biggest source of revenue comes from holding our own football coaching courses.

Rangers and Ross Co trundle into town every summer with their soccer roadshows and charge the kids £25 a pop to boot a ball at some targets watched by a couple of 21 year old chancers wearing Rangers/Ross co tracksuits. Over a 100 kids would turn up at these events so it inspired us to do our own soccer skills weekend and charge the kids a tenner with the local council funding t-shirts that are given to all the kids.

It took a bit of organising but with a dozen or so coaches each doing a couple of hours coaching over a weekend it has proved a huge success and raised over a couple of grand in the past two seasons.

Hope you get as much satisfaction out of your team as I have over the years. I'm giving up at the end of this season to make way for other coaches who are coming through and it will be difficult to walk away. I wont miss the bag packing though!

[Stuart Dickson]

Good thread Kombi.

Most know I’ve been heavily involved with my sons club at Wishaw Wycombe Wanderers. I was on the Executive Committee but I recently stepped down because of work commitments and time constraints. I still help out with the 98’s though. The team made it to the Scottish Cup Quarter Finals last year and over my time at the club have had 9 players directly leave to go Pro Youth, with another three who were born in 99 dropping down to our younger team before going Pro Youth.

For the most part it’s a well run club with its SFA Quality Mark accreditation at Standard Level – although the club really are ready to submit again for Development Level and possibly even Community Level since we now have an adult and a girls team and their coaches are all now qualified as well.

The Sportsmans Dinner is probably our biggest earner. We're into our third year of them now. The first year was excellent with John McKelvie hosting and Alan Rough and John Gahagan speaking. We made a profit that night of over £6500 which paid for a training kit for everyone of our 250 kids. Last year the profits were down mainly due to the fact that we found it much harder to get donations from football clubs for us to auction but we still made around £5,000 profit. Last year was hosted by John McKelvie again and the speakers were Gavin Strang (who was superb) and Frank McAvennie. Our next one is due in June and this time it's Alan Kennedy and Scot Glynn. At the last count we had sold over 330 tickets for a hall with a capacity of 360 (we moved to a much bigger venue this year).

With the success of the Sportsmans Dinner we also tried a Summer Ball. The idea being that this would allow players Mother's to get involved as well and we had another fantastic night last August. John McKelvie did the jokes but there were a couple of magicians and a brilliant band that was on that night too. Profits were down but only because the committee decided that because the ladies were involved they would glam it up a bit but we still made over £4k.

Other decent earners for us have been the Christmas Raffle draw which usually brings in around £1500 and a football prediction competition that I used to run which brought in around £2k a couple of years ago, and further £600 from the last World Cup.

We usually get one or two bag packing slots over the course of a year at the local Tesco store and we've had the odd occasional one at Morrisons. A day at Tescos will get us anywhere from £1000 - £1500. Morrisons is a smaller store. Last time we were there I think we raised around £350.

We’ve also held race nights which have been decent and a recent event was a thing organized by Motherwell Community Coach Bobby Jenks called Hotshots. Basically the kids took part a competition to find who had the hardest shot in the club. The event was handicapped so that the youngest kids had just as much chance of winning as the oldest kids. There were also other competitions running on the night and we got the parents involved as well with the speed guns. From what I’m hearing the winner at our club was a 9 year old who hit a penalty at 58 mph before the handicap was added….anyway after Motherwell had deducted their 30% fee we made a profit from that of £3000.

Another thing that has worked quite well for us has been the website and the Facebook pages. I stole an idea I found on a Junior Football Clubs pages at the start of the season and put together clear sponsorship packages. From there a number of the guys on the committee approached their mates and their bosses to ask if they’d be interested and the response has been fantastic. I think out of all our teams the only one without sponsorship now is our Under 13’s. The way it usually works is if we get someone who is interested they’ll contact me for the current web and facebook stats and I’ll send them out. We’ve got around 2000 unique users on the website and the facebook stats are brilliant because they’ll break down the demographics as well.

I did a club book thing involving a lot of the former coaches and players. It’s a nice thing to have – and it’s still on sale at Amazon but in terms of profit against the amount of work that went into it, there’s probably better ways to spend your time.

Funding - we’ve got a Sportsmatch application in just now that just seems to be dragging on and on. We were nominated for a Lloyds TSB Foundation Award where we’ve just submitted our forms for approval. And we applied for one of the National Lottery grants at the beginning of the season for our two youngest teams which was successful – but the application was late and a stipulation in the conditions was that we were not to start the project until the funding cheque had arrived. Unfortunately the application didn’t get approved until one week before the football season started and we had already purchased all the equipment so we ‘fessed up and withdrew our application.

We’ve also managed to get McDonalds to sponsor one of our new teams although I don’t know if that was just sponsorship from the local McDonalds franchise owner or if it is a grant that we applied for. Basically McDonalds paid for a complete set of strips. And Topps Tiles always sponsor a number of teams from towns they have stores in that wear yellow and blue – fortunately we meet that criteria so our girls academy were given a complete set of strips and sweatshirts.

When I was at the athletics club I remember applying for grants from Dixons Group (DSGi) and from Sky TV both online but I’ve lost the links for them. And Mars had a Foundation thing as well but they only back clubs from within a 30 mile radius of their factory – or at least so they said.

The athletics club also used to get quite a lot of support from Kwik Fit Insurance and their subsidiaries and Lloyds Banking Group were extremely generous when they ended one of their student banking promotions and they sent us a big box of iPod Shuffles to raffle off – and there was also some brilliant backing from a local driving school that did driving lessons for kids aged 8 and over at Hamilton Racecourse. The company was On Board Training and it really was just a case of our kids fitting exactly the kind of customer they were looking for.

I guess the thing that has worked best for the sports clubs I’ve been involved with is just to keep visible in the community – be aware of branding and if you’ve got more than one team make sure they are all wearing the same kit – and to have the balls to ask and to be able to take rejection.

There’s been loads more but I can’t think of it all off the top of my head. I’ll add to the thread when I remember

Edited May 11, 2012 by Stuart Dickson

[Mars]

I've been coaching with AFC Blackpool for 5 years now.

As far as I'm concerned, getting a kit sponsor is the priority.

With that in place, arrange for parents to pay £15 per month subs by direct debit.

Never packed a bag that wasn't mine in my lfe

[Kombi Buddie]

Our season kicks off on 16th September & some things have moved at quite a pace. Being the newbie to the club, I've found that almost everyone else has taken the summer off. I'd have thought that was the best time to get balls rolling & look into things but it appears, not in this club.

Our club meeting is tomorrow night & i'm going in armed with some good ideas, thanks chaps.

Yellow tops, Royal Blue Shorts & Yellow socks is our club colours, just bought 5 new kits through our supplier, where Prostar are doing a deal {it runs till December I think} of buy 4 full kits {15 strips in each} & get a 5th kit free. Saved us a couple of hundred quid.

We've moved venue for the U6's - U12's of our club. Our existing landlords were a bit extortionate in their prices & are making a saving of £2k by moving.

New place we have all year round whereas the old place was limited to 32 weeks as it fitted around the cricket season.

We held our first football tournament in May at the new place, as an inaugural, we were quite pleased with a £1.5K profit but we recognise, we could have done so much more but the 1st year was about finding out & not over stretching ourselves & it going tits up.

Winter training on grass under floodlit at the unearthly cost of £10 per month per team & it has a club house for the parents to head for when it is brassic.

That's another plus for the new place, the social club for aftermatch hospitality. A couple of the other managers & I intend to put on basic hospitality after matches which is a bonus as I like a pint & it's a pisser when everyone buggers off home because there's no where open. That's changed for the coming season & my team's parents are very sociable

Booked a comedy night, a mate of mine from my nurse training days now does the UK comedy circuit {Jongleurs etc} & is bringing 3 other comedians with him for a stand up night at the social club, hopefully raise a few quid there.

I like the sound of the summer ball & Sportsmans dinners and am going to explore them further but to be financially viable, i'll need to find a bigger venue that doesn't cost the earth. London prices can be a hindrence sometimes.

Cheers chaps.

[Kombi Buddie]

season starts away,

U9 yellows away to Maldon & Tiptree

U9 Blues at home to Corringham

U9 Blues are a new team as we picked up a few more players over the seasn and were able to form a second team.

[north isles saint]

season starts away,

U9 yellows away to Maldon & Tiptree

U9 Blues at home to Corringham

U9 Blues are a new team as we picked up a few more players over the seasn and were able to form a second team.

Good luck for this season.

Have been coaching youth teams and refereeing for many years in Shetland first and then Orkney. Have taken a back seat now but appreciate how much time and effort that goes into running kids football teams.

I know dani bongo from my time in Shetland - we actually played in the same team for a few years.

[Kombi Buddie]

N.I.S. Thanks.

U9 Yellows lost 4-2.

U9 Blues won 4-2

Bothe teams played well, competed for every ball. A good season awaits.

[Stuart Dickson]

N.I.S. Thanks.

U9 Yellows lost 4-2.

U9 Blues won 4-2

Bothe teams played well, competed for every ball. A good season awaits.

Good stuff Kombi. You've put in a lot of effort to get some momentum going down there and it sounds like the club is now on the right track. Hopefully what happened with us will happen with you guys now and as people start to see things coming together you suddenly find more people want to get involved.

Our team hasn't got off to a good start at all and were knocked out of the Scottish Cup in the First Round today. We're still trying to pick up the pieces after three more of our players went pro youth with Airdrie United and Dunfermline and a few others left after a handful of defeats last season. It feels like we're starting out again with some of the kids that have recruited in but at least we can see a bit of an improvement since the start of the season.

The Sportsmans Dinner sold out in the end. 360 people had a great night apparently - I missed out cause of illness - and according to the Chairman the club could have sold another 100 tickets easily had the hall been big enough. Any feedback I've heard has been that Alan Kennedy and Scott Glynn were brilliant. Over £8k was made in clear profit on the night with a framed and certified Lionel Messi top from a match against Athletico Bilbao raising over £1400 in the auction.

Last year out other big earner was a Summer Ball which was supposed to appeal to the Mothers of the kids in the team. This years ball was cancelled through lack of ticket sales. It seems the lesson to be learned was not to have an event booked for the September Weekend.

All the age groups are now kitted out in the same Umbro home kit and all the eleven a side teams have the same Umbro away kit with all the kit having been refreshed over the last year. We found that the website and Facebook pages mean we have stats that we can show prospective sponsors and that has meant that all teams - except out most successful two age groups currently - now have all their kit sponsored. Next week all the kids in all age groups are supposed to be getting a new Umbro training kit as well - delivery dates permitting.

There's also been some progress off the pitch towards creating a home venue - at least all the relevant parties have made up and are back round the table.

[Kombi Buddie]

positive stuff Stuart.

The next move for us is getting the same away kit for everyone, we've set 2 years to do that as some teams have recently bought their own.

We're doing a sponsored penalty shootout on 6th October, hopefully raise a wee bit.

For functions, the clubhouse we have can hold 240 standing, 120 seated but one of the other local clubs has a hall {community} that seats 300 and then theres a local venue that has 2 function suites that hp;d 400 & 1200. Plenty options there but we'll see how things go with costs & interest. I'm inclined to aim for the 300 as a 1st go & see how it goes.

[dani bongo]

Good luck for this season.

Have been coaching youth teams and refereeing for many years in Shetland first and then Orkney. Have taken a back seat now but appreciate how much time and effort that goes into running kids football teams.

I know dani bongo from my time in Shetland - we actually played in the same team for a few years.

Good luck to you's Welsh bastairds next year now that John Scott and moi have chucked it.

[Kombi Buddie]

England virtually grinds to a standstill when it snows & so does the football. Match was in Chelmsford today so was quite happy to avoid.

Ordered some kit from

http://www.directsoccer.co.uk/

they've a bit of a sale on at the mo, might be worth a wee look.

[Stuart Dickson]

We've used these guys for kit for the last two years. The guy that owns the company is a bit of a heavy duty salesman but I've been very happy with the kit he's supplied as well as with the printing, embroidery etc. Most people know I'm a pretty demanding customer but these guys haven't put a foot wrong since they were first recommended to me. I'm a big fan of the Umbro kit but there was a bit of a curve ball thrown when Nike sold the UK licence recently. Apparently though we can still get our stuff shipped in from Ireland.

Things have been pretty quiet for us over the Christmas period. Just a Christmas raffle that raised about a grand and a half and one of the teams has some lottery game going on which is helping them raise money for their tour in the summer. On the playing front we've only had a couple of games - the league had us scheduled for a load of away games over the Christmas period which seems silly since we have serial lets on 3g pitches. However this week we got news that a tenth player in four years is leaving our 98's squad for pro youth football - Clyde - and our young goalkeeping coach has landed a part time coaching job with Hamilton Accies. We've also had a EPL scout at a couple of games since November looking at two of our players. When you add that to the four ex players who dropped from the 98's down to their proper age group - 99's - before going pro youth it's a pretty impressive record I think. I'm not a coach so I can say it - our coaches are definitely doing something right even if the results on the park haven't been great this season.

[Stuart Dickson]

Daily Record Kit For Kids starts again this coming Saturday. The registration period opens on Saturday

http://www.dailyrecordkitsforkids.com/

[Kombi Buddie]

could be doing with an initiative like this down here, hey ho.... i'll get my mum & hr cronies to collect from the start this time.

[Kombi Buddie]

Stuart,

had a chat with my mum, she'll get her cronies collecting and have asked my niece to ask her friends likewise, hopefully, this time, WWW will get a few tokens from them.

[Stuart Dickson]

Stuart,

had a chat with my mum, she'll get her cronies collecting and have asked my niece to ask her friends likewise, hopefully, this time, WWW will get a few tokens from them.

Thanks Kombi, much appreciated.

[Stuart Dickson]

could be doing with an initiative like this down here, hey ho.... i'll get my mum & hr cronies to collect from the start this time.

There's pro's and cons to the scheme same as anything else. The company supplying the goods is based in Stirling, so you need to drive there to pick up the order when its' ready. They also charge much higher than standard rates for embroidered badges and numbers on any of the kit and if you want additional items they charge a premium on that too - but for rain jackets, training tops etc it's pretty good. We didn't personalise the rain jackets we got this season, but a couple of years ago we got initials put on a warm up sweater thing we got each of the boys. Sports Direct did the initials for £1 per top.

[Kombi Buddie]

when does it run till? want to make sure their coupons get put to good use.

The Errea kits on the website look ok.

[Stuart Dickson]

when does it run till? want to make sure their coupons get put to good use.

The Errea kits on the website look ok.

I don't know yet. Registrations are on Saturday. It's usually a couple of weeks after that before the coupons start appearing in the papers and then it runs for 6 to 8 weeks. Some days are better than others cause the Record or the Sunday Mail will put multiple tokens in. I've seen up to 8 on a single day in the past. I'll update on here when it starts though.

[Kombi Buddie]

our U9 Blues team have an interesting match today.

when todays opponents visited us in November, we we're 6-2 down with 5 minutes to play

We won 7-6.

Their manager was blue with rage at that, mind you, he was going mental at half time with the game at 2-2.

Unfortunately, we come across some teams who forget, that at 8 years old, it is about enjoying the game. Kick off at 12:30

That was todays opponents last defeat, they expected to win and have been skelping teams week in week out since then, here's hoping today, we show a similar fighting spirit but don't concede so many goals.

Edited February 24, 2013 by Kombi Buddie

[Stuart Dickson]

Got a phone call from a Derek Anderson at Morton this afternoon - they're keen on four of our Under 14's squad and one of our Under 15's so the WWW production line continues in full flow. The pleasing aspect for me is that it's yet another team looking at two of our goalkeepers.

Four years ago I went to the committee to get funding granted to pay for specialist goalkeeping coaching for our goalkeepers who I thought were getting a raw deal for their monthly subscription. Initially it started with out Under 15 squad working with Lyndsay Hamilton at the SFA but it soon developed into us getting Roddy McKenzie in to work with a young goalkeeper from our Under 21's squad who was interested in becoming a coach. Since then we've had a goalkeeper from our Under 16's team go pro youth, one from our Under 15's and now two being fought over by a number of clubs in our Under 14's. To add to that the young goalkeeper we trained up to coach them has now been hired by Hamilton Accies to coach their young goalkeepers. It's good to see it's working

[Kombi Buddie]

Stuart, cracking stuff, best of luck for all your players being looked at.

since me & my cronies got involved at RBYFC, we've been looking to change things a wee bit, some have worked out reasonably well

Goalkeeping Coaching - we sorted for all the clubs keepers to attend {once a month to see how it goes}, every keeper has come on leaps & bounds. My keeper is a new laddie {& he's only 8}

Soccer School - is about to be relaunched

Local YMCA - we're collaborating with, we'll put 4+5 year olds to them and 6 years+, they'll send to us {small steps}

5 of my lads {U9's} have been invited to Southend United for a "friendly"

just got to work out the blokke from the council & get pitches sorted locally instead of paying what we're paying for private grounds

Edited February 25, 2013 by Kombi Buddie

[Stuart Dickson]

Stuart, cracking stuff, best of luck for all your players being looked at.

since me & my cronies got involved at RBYFC, we've been looking to change things a wee bit, some have worked out reasonably well

Goalkeeping Coaching - we sorted for all the clubs keepers to attend {once a month to see how it goes}, every keeper has come on leaps & bounds. My keeper is a new laddie {& he's only 8}

Soccer School - is about to be relaunched

Local YMCA - we're collaborating with, we'll put 4+5 year olds to them and 6 years+, they'll send to us {small steps}

5 of my lads {U9's} have been invited to Southend United for a "friendly"

just got to work out the blokke from the council & get pitches sorted locally instead of paying what we're paying for private grounds

Fantastic Kombi.

The stuff with the local YMCA makes a huge amount of sense. It does my head when I see resources being wasted within the game. I've mentioned before that when clubs like Motherwell and St Mirren run their summer / easter etc coaching schools they are taking grants in from the SFA and often pissing it away because they don't have trusted links with juvenile clubs. What should be happening is that they should be running their schools for the two week period as usual but at the end of that they should be able to direct the kids into local juvenile football if that's where they want to go.

At WWW we've got tie ins with the local primary schools where we run their after school football programme for a number of weeks. It works for us as it means some of our older players get put through their coaching badges for free, they get the experience of learning working with local SFA development officers, and we can use it as a recruitment programme as we did do when we started our girls academy side. It's something I've also seen at NLC where Motherwell Athletics Club have been brought in to run the schools run, jump, throw programme and their sportshall programmes and where that works as a good recruitment tool for the sport as well.

BTW off topic a bit but that something else I'm proud of playing a small part in. I've not been on the Motherwell AC committee for a good few years now but on Sunday they came fourth in the National Indoor Athletics League - not bad for a club that had only 8 track and field members when I first joined the committee some 8 years ago. One of the first league meetings I attended there was just TWO Motherwell AC athletes went and they tried to gain points by running the 100m, 200m, 400m and 800m all in one morning session. Now they've got over 125 kids training at their various groups several times a week. The transformation has been absolutely fantastic.

Goalkeeper training has been fantastic for us though Kombi. It's an area that was always neglected in football and it's annoyed me so I'm really thrilled that our goalkeepers and our goalkeeper coaches are getting spotted and progressing in the game. You guys are on the right road. Just keep looking for what is best for the kids. If you stick to that principle you can't go wrong.

[Stuart Dickson]

Really looking forward to the new season. Wishaw Wycombe were relegated last season during a period of rebuilding and there was concerns we wouldn't be back for the 2013/14 season. We lost our Head Coach to work commitments, and we thought we were losing our goalkeeping coach as he took on work with both Hamilton Accies and Airdrie United working with their youth goalkeepers. It looked bleak and we almost called it a day but one of the parents stepped up and we decided to pay the registrations for the new season and to see how it went.

Well four pre season matches later and we've got a squad of 21 - possibly 22 - that looks physically strong, technically good, and as equally balanced throughout as you could ever hope to have. We're playing at a lower level this season in the second tier but in pre season we've looked really good, competing well against teams in older age groups and against the team that finished third in our top tier last year. I'm buzzing and Sunday - our first league match - can't come quickly enough.

Three years ago when we went on our Scottish Cup and League run we had a strong team that was heavily reliant on three individuals and when they went pro youth we went into freefall. This time round it looks like we've got a far more solid foundation.

How's your lads doing Kombi?