We all have a book in us, so it is said. Certainly those of us who dabble with writing now and again (be it for a living or for fun on a site like this) are all dreaming of ‘the big one’. Of course the first thing you have to do is decide what you’re going to write about. If you’re sticking to fact rather than fiction, then best to choose a subject you have some knowledge about / experience of. Which is why many a friend has said to me “why don’t you write a book about kids’ football?”
Every adult involved in kids’ football has great stories to tell – not just those, like myself, who volunteer to coach or manage (and I use these terms very loosely), but those parents who stand on the touchline in all weathers to cheer on (or in some cases berate) their offspring. Some of the best stories (or most disturbing ones, if truth be told) no doubt come from the refs and linos who in many respects are the true heroes…as are the club committee members, many of whom get the bug so bad that years (even decades) after their own kids have flown the nest, they’re still out there on a bitter December Saturday afternoon or sub-zero January Sunday morning, putting up the nets, clearing the dog turds off the pitch, reasoning with parents who don’t want to be reasoned with…and, of course, finding new patterns in which to lay out the all important colour-coded cones for that pre-match warm up drill that might just give your kids the decisive edge.
So when I heard that I’d been beaten to the punch, that whilst I’d been daydreaming about writing this book, some other bugger had actually gone and done it, I have to admit to being momentarily miffed. When I heard the author was Jim White, I moved from miffed to cynical. No trudging about publishers for our Jim, I pontificated. You see Jim White is a well established newspaper journalist and occasional TV talking head – on football, natch.
You know how it is when you read the blurb on the dust jacket of a book…”x has a weekly column in the Independent, and is a regular contributor to the Times’ weekend magazine, GQ, Private Eye and Smartarse Journos’ Monthly…you can also visit his hilarious blog, it’s actually written for him by a local student journo who caught his eye, but it makes him look good, especially as he doesn’t actually know what a blog is, but he’s promised the student he’ll make him some introductions to the editor of the local listings rag, distributed monthly free of charge to 3,000 homes blah blah blah”.
Blimey, now you see how cynical I am. And how easily I digress. Luckily, I quickly found out that Jim has run his son’s football team for several years. Suddenly, my mental image of him changed. He was one of us. One of the army of volunteer dads & mums who spend far more hours than is healthy wondering whether 10 year old Billy could be converted into a wing back, whether the Under 8 girls will be able to adapt to the proposed flexible ‘total football’ formation, and whether naughty Nathan, with whom you’ve been at loggerheads for years, will just beat you up if you make it to the Under 16s League and don’t pick him on disciplinary grounds.
By now I couldn’t wait to read the book, jealousy and cynicism long since having evaporated. I wanted to see if Jim’s story was my story, was the story of every kids’ football coach.
I began to make a mental check list of the experiences that I know bind so many of us together:
- starting a team because you think you can do it better than that other bloke
- spending hours of your spare time (not to mention a fair few so-called working hours) deliberating over selection / formation issues for that weekend’s game
- agonising over whether to ‘play to win’ / ‘play the strongest team’ or follow a ‘sport for all’ / ‘equal minutes on the pitch for every player’ ethos
- driving your other half to distraction about it all (until he / she becomes so drawn into your web that they become even more obsessed with it than you do)
- dog turds and cones (see above)
- being loudly sworn at by opposition parents
- nodding off at the club AGM as the debate rages about the lack of a vegetarian option at the annual BBQ
- finding yourself shouting at some hapless ref / lino / 9 year old / over-protective parent and wishing you’d bitten your lip
- disagreeing with your fellow management volunteers about the Christmas tree formation
- musing on the fact that at the annual summer tournos, it may be 5-a-side but it certainly isn’t 5-a-day, as fruit & veg are nowhere to be seen, even an Innocent Smoothie can’t be bought for love nor money, amongst the plethora of burger vans, ice cream vans, chips, sweets & doughnuts
- dozens of ‘open to misinterpretation’ emails pinging around cyberspace between managers, parents, committee members and, increasingly, players
- the talented lad you just know won’t make it because of a desperately chaotic home life
- the lad with at best limited talent whose dad is convinced he’s Pele in the making and can’t understand why you don’t “build the team round him”
….I could go on, but I won’t. Instead, I urge you to buy the book, because kids’ football in all its soap opera glory is all here. Variations on all the above themes can be found, plus much more (there’s a great chapter on the club’s annual post-season jaunt to Holland). I’m sure Jim uses a bit of journalistic license (did he really come to blows with his assistant manager in front of the whole team? Did the club committee debate about the club house kettle really get so out of hand?)…actually, he probably didn’t. As any veteran of the world of kids’ football will tell you about much of what goes on, you really couldn’t make it up.
And White does have a trump card, and credit where it’s due, he plays it with flair. His day job sees him regularly interviewing the great and the good of world sport, and so he undertakes at the end of every interview to ask each of his subjects to offer him a word of advice he can pass on to his team of Under 14s. Whilst some give only the briefest, glibbest replies, others push the boat out. Most notably, courtesy of Brian McClair, White and his assistant get a guided tour of Man United’s famous Carrington training ground.
As they watch United’s young Academy pups get put through their paces, one stark difference from the world Jim and his team inhabit is immediately noted. It’s not the emphasis on ball work and small-sided games, it’s been common knowledge for a while that this is what the experts reckon is the key to unlocking the potential of youngsters. Rather, it’s that watching parents are (seemingly by instruction) silent, whilst the coaches say next to nothing also. The boys are left to play, enjoy and learn. No screams of “get stuck in!!!” or “get rid!!!”, no non-stop barking about “second balls” and “playing on the shoulder”.
But hey, that’s the rarefied world of the Manchester United Academy. Back to the local council pitches where the majority ply their trade. Here, as White correctly concludes, for all the angst on show every week, above all it’s about having a laugh. And it’s about doing it for the kids…not yourself.
Nick Gordon Brown does not write for a broadsheet newspaper, and has never had a column in a monthly lifestyle title (though in a former life he was, bizarrely, Assistant Editor of “Ravers’ Bible” Mixmag). Until not so long ago he suspected the word ‘blog’ had vague toilet connotations, but having finally made it into the 21st century, he is now masterminding goalfood’s soon come move into the bloggers’ underground.
He ‘manages’ West Bridgford Rangers u14s in Nottingham’s Young Elizabethan League, and also assists with West Bridgford Wildcats u10 Girls in the Notts Girls & Ladies League.
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