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As my children are now entering the age where my weekends are going to be gleefully jam-packed with trips between local sporting grounds, and I have started to learn what friends of mine have been saying about junior football in this country.
Sitting around with friends for the past 20 years, a main topic of conversation has always centred around us curing all the ills of the game in this country.
With the A-League seemingly getting on solid ground, there is not much to complain about these days, except the current state of the Socceroos and the future of them.
Last weekend my best mate raised some very valid points about how if we think this current batch of Socceroos are finding the going tough, where will we be in 2030, when hopefully one of our kids may be donning the green and gold (a father can dream can’t he)?
Some very pertinent points need to be raised here, that may be boring to some but what I believe will be vital to us seeing our next ‘golden generation’.
Football in this country is the only code where the junior part of the sport actually funds the senior part of the sport. As we don’t have billions in media rights deals we can throw at our juniors, our junior registration fees etc. actually fund the upper echelons of the game, in complete reversal to the other codes.
I don’t particularly care about us knocking other codes off their perches (as I believe there is enough love of sports in this country to cater for everyone) but the dollars issue is becoming a major problem in the game.
My junior club told me that registrations in the district are down almost 30% on last year. I was stunned as to why people are turning away from our great game and asked my mate as to why – as he is heavily involved in junior football in the area.
Firstly, registration fees for juniors at local level are about $120 for the year, plus you have to buy boots, shinpads, socks and shorts. Not too bad you say.
When you compare it to rugby league and AFL – where registrations fees are often nil and the shorts and socks are thrown in as well – parents must be starting to think seriously about the hip pocket and enrolling their kids away from football.
Then, if a child has any potential, a few things can occur. Aside from coaches hunting the parents down to enrol their children in costly academies to help them realise their great potential, once you get to rep teams the cost of registrations and equipment can be upwards of $2,000 for a year!
So if you have a naturally gifted sporting child you may prefer them to play one of the other codes, where you end up with more money in your pocket per year.
Also they will be playing a sport where if they really excel, at least as overprotective parents you can have them close to home rather than tramping through the lower divisions of Western Europe in pursuit of their dreams.
I know that the above scenario will only apply to a very small proportion of kids, but have a good look at what the AFL is doing at the moment.
Following the success of Karmichael Hunt (rugby league), Mike Pyke (Canadian rugby), Tadgh Keneally (Gaelic football) and various others like Scott Pendlebury and Dean Brogan (basketball), they are spreading their scouts around the globe in search of ‘athletes’ who they can train into AFL footballers.
It will not be beyond the realm of possibility that if your child is playing rep football and ticks all the boxes, you may find an AFL scout at your door wanting to run your son thru some drills.
And if he is offered an organisation-funded attempt at a professional sports career rather than a parent funded one, as a parent you would have to consider.
So in 2013, how many potential Socceroos may be playing other sports? Will there be another junior football prodigy like Steve Waugh as captain of the Australian Cricket team? Or another Hazem El Masri giving up the round ball to lead the way with the oval one?
We were always going to have a down period after the golden generation of 2010 left the game, every national team has one.
The Australian cricket team is experiencing one at the moment, the Portuguese national team hasn’t had one since Figo and his cohorts missed out in Euro 2004, and the Australia Labor Party hasn’t found one since Bob Hawke and Pau Keating departed.
We have to ensure our next golden generation is not lost to other sports.
We are in a world where the family budget can only stretch so far. The FFA and relative state federations have to get their act together and find a solution to this problem.
The Socceroos and A-League need to urgently become self-sufficient so precious resources can start to roll back to the bottom tier, otherwise there is a phrase about pushing sh*t uphill that may unfortunately become rather apt.
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