nifootball.co.uk

Become the ‘Man or Woman in the Middle’

HAVE you ever thought about becoming a referee? Well if you have, now is the time to stop thinking and instead set your mind on making 2010 the year that you become the ‘man or the woman in the middle’.

The Fermanagh and Western RA has just announced details of up and coming beginners’ classes.  The cost of the course is £50.00 which includes the referee registration fee for season 2010-2011, and a referee starter pack. Cost of the course for students in full-time education is £30.00.

On completion of the course candidates will be eligible to referee at youth and junior levels in local football.

To register your interest contact our Recruitment Officer, Wesley Campbell, on 07754540076 or email .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Full Time Apprentices at Newry City Football Club

The first ever Northern Ireland Football Club Apprenticeship Programme is being launched at Newry Showgrounds this weekend.

The Programme Led Apprenticeship (PLA) is funded through the Department of Employment and Learning and delivered in partnership with, Newry City Football Club, Southern Regional College and Newry City Community Trust.

Trials are being held for school leavers aged 16 and 17 years old on 15 August (11am-1pm) and 16 August (7-9pm) at Newry City Showgrounds.

The aim of the PLA is to bridge the gap between a growing number of school leavers with the potential to gain higher qualifications and the industry skills shortage in sport and leisure.

The PLA will enhance the performance of participants as players and coaches of Association Football and educate to Vocational Qualification Level 2

SRC as the lead education partner, will offer a programme of education related to sport, education, health and fitness and, where necessary, essential skills.

Newry City Football Club will provide sports specific coaching and industry related training both theoretical and practical.

For further information contact Newry City Manager Gerry Flynn on 07725170945 or .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

nifootball Club Guides

With the new season just about to start nifooball hopes to have its new site go live in the next couple of weeks.  I am working hard behind the scenes to get everything ready so the transition from the old site to the new will go as smoothly as possible.

The new site will have a Club section where we will have information about your club, which will include

Chairman
Club Secretary,
Postal Address,
Website Address
Current teams Associated with your Club i.e. - Bangor Rgrs, Bangor Rgrs II, Bangor Rgrs III, Bangor Rgrs IV

Within Each team there will be information

Manager Name
Ground Name
Ground Address
Team colours, Home and Away (away if applicable)

All the information about teams and clubs can be added by a club admin and once the new site is up and running all you need to do is register (if not already) then contact me about your club.  Even if you are already a clubadmin could I ask members of any club/teams that I cover on the site to send me the relevant information so I can have a complete Club guide for all clubs/teams.

What I require from you is as follows:

Club Info
Chairman
Secretary
Club Contact Address

Team Info
Manager
Registered Ground Name
Registered Ground address (Please include as much details as possible)

Team Colours
Home Shirt
Home Shorts
Home Socks

Away Shirt
Away Shorts
Away Socks

During each season I am regularly contacted for numbers and email addresses for clubs and teams from all leagues mainly to contact a team regarding a cup match or pitch information.

With this in mind I would like to have a contact phone number for each team or a number that can be used to help answer queries about your club and its teams.  NOTE: This number will be displayed on the site for registered users to see and use. 

If you are not prepared to have a number displayed on the website for members to contact your club you can you supply an email address, - Please provide one that someone will be able to use to contact your club, NOTE: this will not be displayed on the site but will be used in a contact form to send you a message from the other members.

Thank you all for your continued support of the website and would like to wish you all good luck for the coming season.

clubadmin Access

Just to update users of the club admin section of nifootball that this will be temporarily unavailable until the new site becomes live.  Unfortunately at present we do not have a time-scale for this but do hope that it will be around the first couple of weeks into the new season.

The same features will be available for you, like adding match reports, player info, match cards and I hope that the new interface will be a lot easier to use.

NI Football & Vandanel Club Offers

nifootball.co.uk are delighted to announce they have agreed an exciting new partnership with teamwear suppliers Vandanel Premier.

Vandanel have agreed to offer their support to all local clubs who are members of the website and forums.
The agreement will see Vandanel offer all team members exclusively discounted kit, leisurewear & accessories for your club for the forthcoming 2010 - 2011 season.

For more information check out the “NI Football & Vandanel Club Offers” topic on the forum or the “Teamwear” link on the home page.

COCA-COLA JUNIOR CUP - CARNINY RANGERS

CARNINY Rangers FC has been reinstated to this season’s Coca Cola Junior Cup competition following a successful appeal against a decision of the Junior Committee.

Carniny Rangers were dismissed from the competition by the Junior Committee when they were considered to have played an ineligible player who was registered by the club after the registration deadline of 31 December.  Crumlin Star were reinstated to the competition and were due to meet Immaculata in the semi final, but that will no longer be the case with the IFA Appeals Board overturning the decision of the Junior Committee.

The Appeals Board considered that the player was properly registered to play in the Competition for Carniny Rangers as he had been registered before the start of the season and that he also played for that team in the Competition and did not play for any other team during his absence from that Club.

Carniny Rangers will now take their place in the semi final against Immaculata and this match will be played at Dixon Park, Ballyclare on Thursday 29 April 2010 at 7.30pm.

COCA COLA JUNIOR CUP - BESSBROOK UNITED

THE Junior Committee, at a meeting last evening, considered the reinstatement of Bessbrook United to the Coca Cola Junior Cup Competition in response to a request from the Club following a recent ruling determined by the Independent Arbitration Panel.

Bessbrook United had previously been dismissed from the competition prior to their Round 5 tie against Ford when it was discovered that they were in breach of Article 30 of the IFA Articles of Association, due to having played players in the competition who also had active registrations with a second club.

However, the Independent Arbitration Panel at a recent investigation concerning OPOC (One Player, One Club) and the implementation of Article 30 as amended at the Association’s Annual General Meeting on 22 June 2009 has determined that “the OPOC Rule does not yet apply to junior clubs under the jurisdiction of the IFA.”

In such circumstances the committee felt that they were obliged to reinstate Bessbrook United to the competition as the rationale for their previous decision to dismiss the club was no longer valid.

Bessbook United FC has therefore been reinstated to the competition and the Round 5 tie against Ford will now be played at Orior Park, Bessbrook on Saturday 24 April 2010.

The winners of the Round 5 tie will then play at their home venue in the Quarter Final against Lincoln Court on Saturday 1 May 2010.

The winners of the Quarter Final will play against Maghera Strollers in the Semi Final on a date and at a venue to be confirmed.

The decline of the 11-a-side game

Terrible Weather. Muddy Pitches. Poor changing room conditions. Local thugs disguised as players. I wake up on a Saturday morning and ask myself why do I bother? Unfortunately a lot of players in Northern Ireland have decided not to and have hung their boots up and switched to mouldies. The decline of the 11-a-side game is as much linked to the rise in popularity of 5, 6 or 7 a side as anything else and this could have damaging effects on the local game. However the issue is also a nationwide one as the following article suggests: http://www.skysports.com/tv_show/story/0,20144,12975_6011592,00.html “Statistics produced by the Football Association last year show that there were nearly 3,000 fewer 11-a-side teams in the country now than there were in the 2005/06 season.” It would certainly be interesting to get comparative figures for Northern Ireland.

I currently play for both an 11-a-side team and 6-a-side team in the local leagues and to be honest I’m not surprised. Excellent 3g and 4g playing facilities are now available all over Belfast in Olympia, Whiterock, Grosvenor Road, Valley Leisure Centre to name a few and coming soon will be Belfast’s Premier Indoor Football arena at Football Factory NI. The surfaces and facilities are excellent, the games are competitive and played in the right spirit and the referees are qualified and don’t belong to any team! You can even play with your mates not strangers who you play with on a Saturday and the times can also be flexible with floodlights at night time and in bad weather. The league administration is also excellent and the main leagues can be found at http://www.nifootball.com

The stark contrast with 11 a side is alarming. There are few very good pitches around Northern Ireland and the facilities are often not great. A team cannot enter the Amateur League without its own pitch which puts many teams off from entering or hinders their progress. There are many other reasons for the decline. Many people with full time jobs and families simply can no longer afford the time to train twice a week and give up their Saturday, often having to travel long distances. The standard of refereeing is also a problem as referees cannot be guaranteed at every match. This leads to managers or other club staff having to referee a game and the other team can often feel “robbed”. 

Many people are also worried about getting a serious injury as it is a sad realization that some players set out to deliberately injure an opponent. More often than not brawn is favoured over brain and skillful players find it hard to flourish. Mass brawls are also not uncommon. In the current financial climate, it’s not surprising that many clubs struggle to cope as they don’t actually generate their own revenue and rely on weekly donations from players and sponsors to keep the club afloat. My current club runs 3 teams and has to fork out over an astonishing £300 per week on training facilities, equipment, transport, referees, league entry and pitch fees.

The effects of this are both short-term and long-term in nature. We can see an immediate decline in numbers for 11-a-side however perhaps more worrying is that our youngsters will continue the trend. The skills required to play both games can be very different and this could have an effect on future generations coming through the amateur leagues to maybe one day play for Northern Ireland or further afield in the English leagues. The other school of thought would argue that perhaps it is a good thing. Sir Trevor Brooking has always said that it is utterly pointless for our youngsters to play 11-a-side on big pitches where the culture is to hit long balls and the short passing game is in short supply. Playing on smaller pitches with better surfaces can teach youngsters how to pass and move and they will see more of the ball and the play. This approach is widely used on the continent such as futsal and you only have to look at their record in major international tournaments compared to the home countries.

You’ve often heard the phrase “Don’t come to me with problems, come to me with solutions.” Well the problem appears to be an infrastructure one and that is hard to change, as well as changing deep-rooted cultures and mindsets. I however think if you cant beat them, join them. Instead of trying to resist the changes the local 11-a-side leagues should learn to adapt and use these new facilities to their advantage. Some clubs have already done so, for example Newington recently groundshared with Crusaders and therefore were able to play home games on the recently installed 3g pitch which can survive the bad weather and ensure revenue streams. (On boxing day Crusaders game with Cliftonville was the only game in the Irish league that survived). It was also lauded as a great cross-community initiative.

As many clubs including my own train on these types of pitches, they just need to make the transition to playing matches on it. This will inevitably involve building their own pitch which is extremely difficult and requires the support of the local community. There is therefore a need for substantial funding from local councils, local and central government. However grass pitches should also be improved as they cannot be forgotten and allowed to fall into disrepair either. The team at http://www.nifootball.co.uk are doing a great job at promoting the 11-a-side game however they cannot do it alone. This approach would go some way to securing the future of both the 11-a-side and 5-a-side games and main winner would be local football.

BDFL Weekend Preview 27th March 2010

There are four games this weekend in the BDFL Premier, St Malachys OB entertain St Pauls FC in a basement battle with St Pauls FC hoping that their recent change in form continues.  Ardoyne WMC travel to St Matthews and it will be hard to bet against an Ardoyne win but it wont be easy. 

Tollymore Swifts looking to catch the current league leaders and will overtake Newington FC in the table with a win.  The final game of the day has West Belfast at home to Greencastle Rovers, West Belfast may have the upperhand in this game if recent results are anything to go by.

Ballymena and Provincial Weekly Round up 17th March 2010

With the continued good weather all scheduled games were played on Saturday. The top game of the day was Brantwood v Raceview in a top of the table Intermediate League clash which saw the teams share the points.

In the juniors the big surprise of the day was the five nil defeat Carniny Amateurs inflicted on Ballymoney United Reserves who had only conceded 20 goals in their previous 18 league games.