Well done lads for keeping this topic on the agenda after debates about soccer calendar seemed to have gone quiet following the ill-fated FAI Pathways Plan.
As someone coaching underage soccer in Dublin, what we are offering kids at the moment is not good enough. Aside from the elite few, the majority of grassroots clubs are dependent on grass pitches, usually public parks.
So in a bad winter like this - which is not an outlier - pitches can be off for weeks upon weeks between November and March. Kids are getting the odd game here and there, if they are lucky, when an astro is available or the weather relents. Fixtures are issued every week and you feel like a dope going out to parents with details of games you know won't take place.
In winters like this, the soccer season in Dublin amounts to a few games in September & October and then a rush of games in March - May. Then for the best months of weather in Ireland - nothing. The DDSL had a 'silent sideline' initiative last weekend - the irony being that the sidelines were silent due to mass postponements.
This is not meant as a go at the FAI or, in this case, the DDSL. More to ask why we can't do better?
- More government spending on municipal or multisport all-weather pitches, naturally.
- Indoor futsal or small sided astro tournaments for the worst of the winter months.
- Make the most of the better months by running juvenile season up till end of June and starting end of August as per school calendar (as Dublin GAA do).
- Worried about numbers during the summer holiday season? Organise small sided tournaments.
Most of all, ask what's in the kids interests, rather than managers and clubs who want to win trophies or political battles between administrative vested interests. Kids just want to play games.
"Why does the most participated sport in the country have to worry about other sports"
Eoin Doyle and Johnny Ward discuss the reasons to move to a summer schedule for football in Ireland.
Football Saturday on Off The Ball w/
@WilliamHillIre