The purpose of this note is to explain the current position with the under 15s team.

As you know – especially those of you who came to training and friendly matches last season – I and one or two others have volunteered a lot of time and effort during the past year or so in trying to establish a team at this year group.

Efforts began last summer when I started training a small group of boys (then under 14s). Partly because of then limited player numbers, it was not possible to enter the team into a league and so the boys had to be content with playing a few friendly matches and in tournaments. Subsequently, though some players “came and went”, continuous efforts to recruit more players resulted in slowly growing numbers to the point where we recently had between 14 and 16 boys training and a good squad of players with which to move forward. Also, James Dixon was successfully “recruited” (as an unpaid volunteer) to help coach the boys. James is a very enthusiastic, good coach and I am very grateful to James for all his efforts.

In several respects, therefore, including a good base for training at St Marks School, we had several key factors for a successful team in place.

However, as I have explained on several occasions, the success and continuation of a team in any year group crucially and ultimately depends on the parents-carers of those players in that team being able and willing to themselves get involved as volunteers to undertake the necessary roles which need covering (including coaching and managing the team on match days). Without such involvement, the continuation of the team relies on volunteers (James and myself in this situation), who are not parents-carers of any of the players in the team, which I would hope you would agree is not, in the long-term, a reasonable expectation of the volunteers concerned.

 The current situation is that, with too few parents-carers being prepared to volunteer to take on all that is involved with match-day management, I regret to say that it very much looks as though the team will unfortunately have to be disbanded.

A final decision on this will be taken during the next week and will partly depend on the outcome of a Midsomer Norton League management committee meeting tomorrow evening at which the situation of the under 15 team will be considered. The committee will decide whether the team can be given more time (perhaps 2-3 weeks) to try to find more volunteers or whether it will be asked to leave the league now because of falling behind with its fixtures. As a way of trying to enable the team to catch up its fixtures, I have suggested to the league committee that the “catch-up” matches could be played on Monday evenings on the St Marks School astro, but I am doubtful that the league committee will agree to that suggestion.

And, in any event, even if the League does grant the team more time, the main problem of insufficient parent-carer involvement will remain. Therefore, should anyone be prepared to volunteer to take on all that is involved with match-day management, please get in touch with me immediately.

If a decision to disband the team is confirmed, it would be my expectation that the club would offer to those parents-carers who have paid the full £90 subscription a partial refund of this amount, after deducting an appropriate amount for the costs already incurred (e.g. for hire of the St Marks astro). The final decisions will need to be taken by the members of the club’s senior management committee.

I feel extremely sorry for all the boys that things are turning out as they are, especially as so many of them have been so enthusiastic for so long and all they want to do is play and enjoy football. This is all I have wanted to encourage and facilitate, but things simply cannot continue as they are without an immediate injection of significantly more parent-carer involvement.

Pending final decisions on the way ahead, I have decided to cancel training tomorrow evening.

Tony Day
(07833133031)