Development Plan Update
Tue 4th September 2018 | General | By Gary Langley
Over the last few days we have submitted our League Development Plan to The FA which has been a relief to League Development Officer, Gary Langley, who at this time of year is normally poised over a laptop and doing the rounds of local County Football Associations harvesting support.
Giving us a brief overview of what the plan does and what the aims are for it, Gary tells us why he is running around so much and why we have a Development Plan in place.
“Running around is a fairly loose term, however since the League Development Plan Template arrived to me around six weeks ago, I have been busy filling it out and getting it ready for submission by the end of this week, this has involved visitng County Football Associations, League Board members, visiting clubs and industry partners to ensure we have covered everything. The League Development Plan is our statement off intent, it is our pledge to The FA and member clubs over our direction for Development of ourselves at the North West Counties Football League.
Each year we fill out Seven sections, defined by the Football Association with specific aims, objectives and schemes that we will look to implement as part of an overall three year at-a-time plan. For example, in the current plan we are actually looking as far as the 2022-23 season for our overall shape and boundaries and within the wider plan looking at certain initiatives as far away as 2021. I suddenly feel very old!
Those seven sections are titled, Running the League, Sustain and increase participation, Player Development – Environment, Player Development – Coaching, The Football Workforce, Improved Playing and training facilities and County Support. Within each of those categories we outline a Development Strategy specific to our league. All National League System Leagues get given the same templates for their Development Grant applications and their content within those sections will vary greatly depending on the league, region and make-up of their member clubs.
That’s the playing field that we are given and we have to plan what is best for us, when you look back at the way the league has evolved and changed over the last 5 years or so you can see that we have come a fair way in size, stature and way that we operate, so we need to keep that up.
So what are we looking at in the new plan? For us, a continually big item has been providing the free ground grades for clubs looking to apply to join the North West Counties League at some point in the future. The work that the Committee does on these visits has helped guide many clubs in the right direction, many of which are now progressive and established members of the league. We are rightly going to keep that up and are committed to doing so.
Elsewhere, items such as the ‘Growing Your Club initiative has left a lasting legacy on us as a league and on member clubs so we are exploring more opportunities with that. The workload on Club Secretaries has been a concern of ours for a while now and we have put a number of items in place to try and assist, however, the workload keeps growing and whilst we cannot refuse to conform to national standards, we can look at ways of providing better reference material and training guides for volunteers in key positions at clubs such as Secretaries, Treasurers, Media folk and so on, every volunteer position is as important as the next.
Our Admin workshops have been well received over the last couple of seasons so we have pledged to continue those as well as evolve content, with the likelihood of Club Licensing being on the horizon and the implications that brings with regards to Standards and Financial accountancy, its important to be on the ball with that even before it arrives.
We will evolve our work with County Football Associations, we have created close ties with a number of the County FA’s that we work with, I recall it being around nine in total now, such is the size of our area. The County FA’s have worked with us on a number of projects and we have been delighted to have them come in on a number of our initiatives to offer support on matters such as Grant funding, Ground Developments, Football services, Coaching and other key services. There are many services that the County FA’s offer clubs and we will be working even closer with them to direct clubs to the resources that they offer.
We will work on Developing opportunities for referees and officials as well as supporting the development of observers at games. We will continue to offer support to players looking to take up referee courses. The Respect Campaign will continue to have our full focus, we have been strong advocates and leaders with The FA’s Respect Campaigns and ‘For all’ initiatives.
We are keen to focus in the new Development Plan on what we do best, so certain items have been taken out, these are items such as the Coaching Courses, we ran an FA Level 1 Coaching Course last year but in all honesty, struggled to fill it and as a result we have also reviewed our previously stated aim of all head Coaches at Clubs to be FA Level 2 standard by 2020. Sometimes you have to look at something and say that it’s just not feasible in the current environment and we can look at that I the future, if Coaching requirements come in as part of club licensing then demand may peak.
The job’s a good un’ on the Development Plan, we will meet with the FA in due course and make our pitch for funding, we have always stated that we will give good value for the Grant and we believe we have delivered on each occasion. With the game evolving and the structure of the game ever-changing we need to stay as far ahead of change as possible and that sometimes means being a bit ‘outside of the box’ as they say and as long as we have a go and don’t stand still the League will continue to thrive and offer a progressive platform for its member clubs.
Development Plan Update
Tue 4th September 2018 | General
By Gary Langley
Over the last few days we have submitted our League Development Plan to The FA which has been a relief to League Development Officer, Gary Langley, who at this time of year is normally poised over a laptop and doing the rounds of local County Football Associations harvesting support.
Giving us a brief overview of what the plan does and what the aims are for it, Gary tells us why he is running around so much and why we have a Development Plan in place.
“Running around is a fairly loose term, however since the League Development Plan Template arrived to me around six weeks ago, I have been busy filling it out and getting it ready for submission by the end of this week, this has involved visitng County Football Associations, League Board members, visiting clubs and industry partners to ensure we have covered everything. The League Development Plan is our statement off intent, it is our pledge to The FA and member clubs over our direction for Development of ourselves at the North West Counties Football League.
Each year we fill out Seven sections, defined by the Football Association with specific aims, objectives and schemes that we will look to implement as part of an overall three year at-a-time plan. For example, in the current plan we are actually looking as far as the 2022-23 season for our overall shape and boundaries and within the wider plan looking at certain initiatives as far away as 2021. I suddenly feel very old!
Those seven sections are titled, Running the League, Sustain and increase participation, Player Development – Environment, Player Development – Coaching, The Football Workforce, Improved Playing and training facilities and County Support. Within each of those categories we outline a Development Strategy specific to our league. All National League System Leagues get given the same templates for their Development Grant applications and their content within those sections will vary greatly depending on the league, region and make-up of their member clubs.
That’s the playing field that we are given and we have to plan what is best for us, when you look back at the way the league has evolved and changed over the last 5 years or so you can see that we have come a fair way in size, stature and way that we operate, so we need to keep that up.
So what are we looking at in the new plan? For us, a continually big item has been providing the free ground grades for clubs looking to apply to join the North West Counties League at some point in the future. The work that the Committee does on these visits has helped guide many clubs in the right direction, many of which are now progressive and established members of the league. We are rightly going to keep that up and are committed to doing so.
Elsewhere, items such as the ‘Growing Your Club initiative has left a lasting legacy on us as a league and on member clubs so we are exploring more opportunities with that. The workload on Club Secretaries has been a concern of ours for a while now and we have put a number of items in place to try and assist, however, the workload keeps growing and whilst we cannot refuse to conform to national standards, we can look at ways of providing better reference material and training guides for volunteers in key positions at clubs such as Secretaries, Treasurers, Media folk and so on, every volunteer position is as important as the next.
Our Admin workshops have been well received over the last couple of seasons so we have pledged to continue those as well as evolve content, with the likelihood of Club Licensing being on the horizon and the implications that brings with regards to Standards and Financial accountancy, its important to be on the ball with that even before it arrives.
We will evolve our work with County Football Associations, we have created close ties with a number of the County FA’s that we work with, I recall it being around nine in total now, such is the size of our area. The County FA’s have worked with us on a number of projects and we have been delighted to have them come in on a number of our initiatives to offer support on matters such as Grant funding, Ground Developments, Football services, Coaching and other key services. There are many services that the County FA’s offer clubs and we will be working even closer with them to direct clubs to the resources that they offer.
We will work on Developing opportunities for referees and officials as well as supporting the development of observers at games. We will continue to offer support to players looking to take up referee courses. The Respect Campaign will continue to have our full focus, we have been strong advocates and leaders with The FA’s Respect Campaigns and ‘For all’ initiatives.
We are keen to focus in the new Development Plan on what we do best, so certain items have been taken out, these are items such as the Coaching Courses, we ran an FA Level 1 Coaching Course last year but in all honesty, struggled to fill it and as a result we have also reviewed our previously stated aim of all head Coaches at Clubs to be FA Level 2 standard by 2020. Sometimes you have to look at something and say that it’s just not feasible in the current environment and we can look at that I the future, if Coaching requirements come in as part of club licensing then demand may peak.
The job’s a good un’ on the Development Plan, we will meet with the FA in due course and make our pitch for funding, we have always stated that we will give good value for the Grant and we believe we have delivered on each occasion. With the game evolving and the structure of the game ever-changing we need to stay as far ahead of change as possible and that sometimes means being a bit ‘outside of the box’ as they say and as long as we have a go and don’t stand still the League will continue to thrive and offer a progressive platform for its member clubs.
