Comments on: ‘THE SILENT WEEKEND’ – IS IT NATURAL? HOW ABOUT ‘A NOISY WEEKEND?’ https://www.teamgrassroots.co.uk/the-silent-weekend-is-it-natural-how-about-a-noisy-weekend/ The Voice of Grassroots Football Wed, 24 May 2023 12:38:37 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 By: getridofitoneofyou https://www.teamgrassroots.co.uk/the-silent-weekend-is-it-natural-how-about-a-noisy-weekend/#comment-24 Wed, 02 May 2018 07:24:45 +0000 http://www.teamgrassroots.co.uk/?p=9185#comment-24 Silence is not the key element of the “silent weekend’. When Silent weekend was first organised in Lancashire in 2014 the stated aim was to ‘free children from incessant instruction’. A simple evaluation question would be, has it done that? And the answer would be no.
But if this is a problem then the solution is not to hold more silent weekends sporadically. As far back as 2008 Nick Levitt, former FA Development Manager, said that children playing football have very little ownership of the games they play. Nick Levitt presented the 2012 review to make football more fun for kids. The same claim was made for mini-soccer in 1998.
The reason that we keep coming up with schemes to make football more enjoyable is that we don’t address the element identified by Nick Levitt, ownership.
The core of the problem is not down to parents it is not even down to the coaches who shout instructions constantly, it is down to the FA. It is the FA who creates the backdrop of ‘England’s failure’ to produce players. It is the FA who validates amateur coaching with certificates but no assessment. (I have 5 FA coaching certificates, but I have never had meaningful assessment for my competence or suitability to coach children.) It is the FA who validates the replication of adult football for children with Charter Standard awards. The FA has taken ownership of kid’s games.
The effect of this is that children don’t enjoy it. I live in the Hull area. When I started amateur coaching in 2006 there were 43 under16 teams in the local league. In 2018 there are 28.
The kids are letting the FA know what they think of amateur coaching.
Amateur football coaching is a disaster. How did anyone think that you could become a football coach in a weekend, but until this is recognised at the FA nobody is in a position to address it.

John Breen

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