The Mariners bring grassroots football to a rugby heartland

Mariners played Newcastle tonight in Canberra tickets sold 5, 000 crowd around 8, 000 when let ins added. Not bad for a cold winter night with two out of district teams playing in pre season well actually a pre pre season match.

Interesting and relevant article re our discussions on AFL moves into Sydney: http://www.realfooty.com.au/news/news/how-the-afl-boosts-its-numbers-to-sell-its-game/2008/07/11/1215658130933.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap2

True Tah Brazilians play a lot of Futsal at an early age. This is generally attributed to the development of their ball skills. But many learnt there football on the streets like me and would still have had to find suitable grass playing fields as they got older in order to develop teamwork. Having seen a video comparing USA v Brazil training & development of footballers recently it appears that the better players are spotted at an early age and drafted into youth teams attached to professional clubs. Thus they have access to grass& better playing surfaces and develop teamwork to add to their individual ball skills. I should imagine also( Ronnie Biggs may have known) that these do not develop into the mud baths of England etc because of the climate. It seems neither RL or football own their own ground in Wigan a bloke called Dave Whelan does. " JJB Stadium is shared by both Wigan Warriors rugby league club and Wigan Athletic Football Club neither side owns the stadium instead it is controlled by the company Whelco which is owned by Dave Whelan. As a grantee to Wigan rugby league the club was given a 99 year lease on the stadium so that the club would still have a stadium even if Whelan sold the club, which he did in 2007." So its a little more complicated in Wigan than at most English football clubs who own their own ground. Bit of conflict of interest there for Dave methinks seeing as he owned both clubs at one stage. Cant say about the Championship clubs only know about complaints from watching EPL, but I should imagine that any professional football club would have complained about the shocking surface I saw at JJB stadium last season. Re FFA's finances. They have publicly stated that they need registration fees to help finance the national teams. Whether this is right or wrong this is another debate. Frank Lowy will not get involved in any free hand outs believe me. He could have assisted the game from the very beginning of his chairmanship but didn't . Particularly in relation to marquee players at A-League clubs. He obviously believes you earn your stripes & rightly so.

jimbo said | July 7th 2008 @ 11:35am Jimbo, Sydney FC play Manly Utd tonight at Cromer Park KO at 7PM...

No arguments at the highest level in all codes you need the best available surface you can get, I was referring to the more social leagues, etc. I remember reading Viv Richards account of playing cricket in Antigua, he said that when fielder, there was a real reluctance to slide onto the ground to prevent boundaries, for several reasons, one being the risk of getting scrapped knees. Towser thanks for pointing out the pros and cons of playing soccer on grassy and gravel pitches - the fact that a lot of Brazilians start playing soccer on non-grassy pitches hasn't stopped them from being the premier soccer nation in the world. I was unaware that Wigan RL and Wigan Athletic shared the same ground, however you mention all the EPL side are complaining about it, how come the sides in the Championship (i.e. the level below EPL) didn't complain? Or did they? Surely Wigan Athletic would be able to purchase their own ground? The ground debate is only really limited to Australia, as the majority of countries only have soccer as their sport, and where there are other codes, like the UK and France, there is a tendency for clubs to own their grounds. In South Africa, a lot of the PSL teams play out of rugby grounds like Loftus, Boet Erasmus and Ellis Park, with no real ground complaints. Thanks for explaining the financial situation overall, but I was referring more to grassroots clubs, didn't realise that Australia had 9 national sides, I thought it was only Socceroos, Matildas and Olyroos - these are expensive, I remember the ARU scrapped the Wallaroos and the under 19s a few years ago due to costs.

True Tah asked where does all the FFA's money go. No Rocket science involved here. Its spent on running the A-League & 9 National teams(& support staff needed to run them) playing across Asia. Also another point raised, yes you can play football anywhere with a proviso . To play it at the highest level which involves on the ground foot passing & receiving & runningwith/dribbling the ball you do need a near perfect surface. How do I know this,because as a kid I played on a rough surface to learn my football skills ie the bomb sites & back lanes of post war Central Sheffield. We could develop our skills on this surface to a point,but most of the time was spent avoiding going to hospital. Hard to create the perfect on ground pass when theres a house brick or a piece of lost window blocking the balls path to your team mate. What you learnt was the ball control skills in this enviroment. IE control of the football in relation to the individual could be developed to a high level,but teamwork could only be developed on a rudimentary level at best because of the playing surface. So you tended to see individual dribbling of the ball etc rather than passing. For us to develop team work we had to get on our bikes & cycle out of the brick & concrete(or what was left of it) city area to a park about 3 kms away. This was football nirvana for us. Lush green grass(early on anyway till winter) where the ball could be passed and do your bidding to develop the teamwork needed to play football at its highest level. So the bottom line is yes the reason football is played worldwide is because it can be played anywhere on the planet because of its nature as a sport(ie a round ball a small space - we kicked a ball up an entry between 2 houses to develop passing skills -the entry was a metre wide & maybe 6 metres long -the idea being not to touch the side of the entry when passing or the continuous kicking of the football against a wall learning instant foot control as it bounced off etc. But for the quick one touch team football as per Brazil you need an excellent surface to play on. NO bobbles please. This is also why as the winter approached and amateur fields became muddier the teamwork passing game detiorated and dribbling and strength took over. Yet go to see professional football at Wednesday or Uniteds ground and you were confronted with a bowling green surface in comparison. Because it was recognised by the ground staff at Hillsborough or Bramall lane that to ply there trade and present a spectacle to the masses Association football players needed the a near perfect grassy pitch. Its one of the reasons that EPL teams even today complain about Wigans pitch. It was developed with their traditional RL team in mind. Nobody envisaged an EPL side there in days past. So in Australia Football does need good playing surfaces to develop the game to the highest level. PIm Verbeek or Baan are not trying to put other sports noses out of joint when stating this. They speak from a perspective I understand, where football pitches are used solely for that sport only. However we know this is not the case here, so it seems that an era of mutual logical co-operation is needed in Australia from top to bottom taking into the consideration the needs of all sports. Any other way will be detrimental to everybody.

IN regards to artificial turf, Many, if not all, of the NFL stadiums in America are a combination of synthetic turf and natural grass. The two are interwoven together. Potential for all sportss prehaps? THough would the artificial be too hard for either Rugby?

Got to say the CCM,have lelt the rest behind regarding the community & grass roots level.

DISC (Darebin International Sports Centre) in Melbourne installed 3 of the latest artificial surfaces for use by the footballing community in Melbourne. Grounds get so much use they must just about be worn out. VIS, State Squads, Club training, Junior matches, Senior friendlies U/21 league matches and so on. Ball bounces true and only fractionally highr than natural surface. It is the way of the future. FIFA have a program to lay them out in Africa. With our drought conditions it is a commonsense although expensive solution. Some wealthier schools also have the surface which was first used at one of the recent Youth World Cups (I think in Chile). Low maintenance and NO water required. More are planned to be laid out in coming years. Not advisable to do slide tackles on though.

Astro turf or something similar to the carpeting used in indoor, you mean, Sledgehammer? I think you're right and this could be an inevitable way of the future, for junior sport on suburban grounds perhaps. Wahroonga is a great club too. One of the foundation clubs in the area.

Regarding football and the North Shore, the fact is that it has always been far and away the biggest junior sport in that area. I should know, having played over 100 games for the Wahroonga tigers way back in the early 80s. So no real change there, perhaps the perception of local football as a spectator sport has changed if anything. Regarding the fields around Sydney, they are a disgrace for all codes. When I lived in France they did play a lot of soccer on both gravel and artificial turf (on gravel the guys wore stockings or something similar). Going forward artificial turf might be the answer. The initial costs are high but it is suitable for soccer and I believe rugby/ league & probably AFL (one rugby club in England is looking at using it). And yes, soccer, league and union are all played at Tunks park, often on the same day.

In terms of the Mariners bringing football to rugby's heartland, they are also playing a game against the NZD u/23 on the 15th of July at the main oval at Knox Grammar School at Wahroonga. This oval was recently refurbished I think strictly for rugby, so they are making some inroads into rugby territory

Midfielder, my local park on the lower North shore (Primrose) has the DP posts up and is used for soccer, rugby, and league, both training and games, varying age groups. And walking of dogs, personal exercise, and blokes having a kick with their kids. My observation of other grounds such as Tunks park is similar. None of these parks are privately owned by a club, or reserved for the use of any particular sport. Are the grounds you refer to privately owned, or part of a school’s grounds? Were they left on trust by a benefactor of a particular sport? If not and they are Council owned it is almost impossible to envisage how they could lawfully be restricted to one club and not be used at all every second weekend. Redb, John O’Neill used the phrase “there’s a gorilla in the room” which is a well known colloquial phrase, and there was nothing racial about its use.

Redb, they breed them tough on the west coast of Tassie - the "Gravel" is not the only thing that is unique in Queenstown!

True Tah, on the rego papers it says 20 goes directly to the FFA as a 'Fund Raising Levy', the rest, who knows? Don't know of any clubs that have sponsorship for their teams to the tune of free rego, but we do collect advertising and donations from businesses and parents which help to run the club, equipment, travel, and so on, but not directly to each player. We have a lot of them to share it with.

Jimbo, if that is the case that AFL is giving away these free goodies, then we will see a lot more kids going to AFL. The amount for rugby registration varies from club to club. I know one inner west junior club has a very lucrative sponsorship with Telstra, and therefore does not charge any registration fees. $150 to $250 is a lot of money for a junior, does FFA impose player levies etc?

Cosmos Forever, i think what you will find that its flat gravel/clay not bumpy dirt. Its used for tennis courts and football. But it is not used for football at any level above that of church/social leagues. You can't consistantly develop players of any ability on dirt pitches, the alternative is like in brasil to play on roads or ashpalt which is flat but a liitle sore when you fall over.

On my travels in Europe I have seen enormous numbers of local football competitions played on gravel. Apparently those Europeans are pretty good at football... Biggest issue for pitches of all codes is going to be lack of water to keep them alive. Canberra already has a number of dead pitches due to water controls - in the end we might all be playing on gravel!

I can't beleive that its being argued that grass on the pitch is more important for Rugby and AFL than Football. If you want to watch a display of frustrating and unsatisfying football watch any match after a pitch has been torn up by rugby. Its a comedy of errors because it doesn't matter how skillful you are if the ball bobbles up to your knee when rolling towards you you are going to look like a twat. It doesn't affect rugby players ability to catch and pass or run, and doesn't really affect the spectacle. The fact that it may give you a few scrapes or bumps and bruises is a different matter and can also be said for football.

Redb, the AFL's bank balance is very impressive. I'm sure that they play hard ball with each other and not just the other codes. It helps that AFL don't have to support several national teams that travel overseas regularly, so you can choose to re-invest all your money in the local game. I think football has emerged from the bad old soccer days now and nobody wants to go back to the way things were. We don't want mega rich philanthropists with ethnic ties holding the game to ransom and not telling us what they did with the money. I believe those days are over and the Crawford commission has been excellent in helping establish a new professional FFA run by people like John O'Neill and Ben Buckley. Smart business decisions are being made and that's why football has emerged as the elephant in the room. We've raked over the government funding for football issue in another blog and if you look at the figures objectively, football is not being treated any better than any of the other sports. Per registered player it's probably the least funded sport. You're right True Tah about the high costs of registering a junior footballer. Not sure what it is for Rugby, but football is somewhere between 150 to 250 per year, which includes insurance, socks and shorts. One of the footballing dads told me earlier this year that one of the local AFL people were offering to waive any registration fees for the first year and threw in a nice AFL kitbag with all the gear and a Sherrin as well for any kids that were interested in trying out AFL. Where's the FIFA showbag?