Grassroots football in England - The root cause
Bill Shankly OBE
It’s Saturday evening and I can’t stop planning the winning goal I’m going to score the next day for Caterham Pumas, the team I’ve been at since the age of eight, against our fierce rivals.
Should I use my right or left foot? My team is bottom of the league and they’re top - both teams have nothing to play for -but it doesn’t matter; this is my cup final. I never scored. In fact, I made a 10-minute cameo appearance in a season I struggled to complete a half. It was a year that saw an end to my memorable Pumas career but one that I’ll cherish. It was my Premier League goodbye - my equivalent to Didier Drogba’s emotional Chelsea farewell. It didn’t matter if the pitch was rain-sodden or there were uneven patches of turf - that was my excuse when I’d miss a sitter - but to represent my local team in the orange and blue kit alongside my friends meant everything.
Fast forward four years and my story is just one of many. Seven million players of all ages, 400,000 volunteers, 300,000 coaches and 27,000 qualified referees help the Football Association (FA) keep the grassroots game going each year. Those FA statistics merely highlight the role that grassroots football plays in modern society and the impact it has on individuals up and down the country. s Bill Shankly once expressed, “Football’s not a matter of life and death. It’s much more important than that.”
Like all professional footballers and managers, Shankly’s arrival in football is a similar story. He wasn’t just placed in the Preston North End first team where he went on to make over 250 appearances. It began at the grassroots level. But it’s a troubled time for amateur football in England. As professional players pocket weekly wages one can only dream of and the Premier League welcome record broadcasting revenues, local clubs are struggling as the cost of pitches increases and the consumption of football changes. With 80 per cent of football matches played on local authority owned pitches, public sector cuts mean clubs are struggling to muster up enough money to meet the increased price demands. Add to the equation the weeks of play lost to bad weather and neglected facilities, it’s no wonder participation levels are dropping at a steady pace.
In March, Sport England cut £1.6m of its public funding to the FA following a decline in grassroots participation3. Their figures show 1.84 million people regularly play football, but that’s a fall of 100,000 since April last year and has seen football drop down to the fourth most participated sport behind swimming, athletics and cycling. Back in 2006 more than two million people were regularly playing football as an activity - further highlighting the battle governing bodies and local league clubs have on their hands to sustain football’s appeal. But noise is being made and one volunteer in particular is on a mission.
Kenny Saunders - a stalwart in the game since 16 - created the petition Save Grassroots Football asking for the Premier League to give 7.5 per cent of their broadcasting revenue back to the grassroots game. The 50-year-old, who works for Liverpool-based Woolton FC, has been involved in football in an unpaid capacity for 19 years and founded the campaign with help from Bolton North East MP David Crausby. Woolton’s 62 teams compete on waterlogged pitches without a changing room or toilets, leading Saunders to become an advocate for grassroots change. A hard man to chase, it takes no more than a minute to get to grips with the passion the Liverpudlian has for the game. The petition closed in February and failed to secure the required 100,000 signatures but for Saunders it was confirmation that over 30,000 people agreed with the crisis.
Shankly will be fondly remembered for his 15-year managerial spell at Liverpool where he became a cult hero as the Premier League giants lifted three First Division titles and won their first ever European trophy after defeating Borussia Mönchengladbach in the 1973 UEFA Cup Final.