The Death of UK Football…

 

If anyone was wondering why football (soccer) in the UK is gradually being eroded to the point where we are a 3rd world country, you might want to take a look at this.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2047420/Childrens-football-league-lists-scores-1-0-1-1-avoid-humiliation.html

So in schools the kids are streamed based on their ability, with the most able kids paraded as shining examples of academic excellence and that is considered fine, but put them on a football field and the physically excellent kids have to be held back to allow for the weak to “compete”. This makes me sick. This has nothing to do with the kids. They don’t even read the papers. It’s to do with politically correct parents who just can’t deal with the fact their kids are wet lettuces. You can be sure the kids will remember a 20:0 defeat and you can be sure their friends will know the real score.

The real problem with the Telford Junior League is they have a “football for all” policy, which is good, but they refuse to stream the kids at an early age, so teams made up of Premiership Development Center players are playing against kids who are rarely facing in the direction of the ball. That’s no joke. I’ve seen it. With this in mind, of course some teams are going to get the sh*t kicked out of them.

Every kid should have the right to play football, but it should be against opposition that is of an appropriate level to them. Stream the kids in sports, the way they are in school. This latest nonsense from the TJL is political correctness gone mad. Life isn’t fair. Everyone is not equally good at everything. Kids need to learn that and start working hard for the things they want, rather than having it handed to them on a plate.

Cheers

Tim…

Update: The decision has been reversed. The full scores are now being published again. I like to think my blog rant helped, but the reality is, just about everyone with any sense could see that lying about the scores was not sensible.

Author: Tim...

DBA, Developer, Author, Trainer.

6 thoughts on “The Death of UK Football…”

  1. Well, if it’s political-correctness-gone-mad that you’re looking for then the Daily Mail is the place to find it 🙂

    My oldest boy’s school “sets” (as opposed to “streams”) in P.E. and Maths, but the kids themselves are not told explicitly which set they are in. Of course when if your child gets maths homework to draw a bunch of triangles or something you could guess.

    I wish that instead of downplaying success or failure they could instead just try to find and praise the best about every student. Does that sound too happy-clappy?

    The football “team” I play for has a player who rarely faces in the direction of the ball. I wish someone would give him a hint to give up …

  2. Totally agree with you, but having been through the last few years, I can see their point. 8-year-olds haven’t quite toughened up to be able to handle severe losses, and going through it by fire doesn’t toughen them up. By 10 they are a little better, but still take it hard. In my 10-year-olds league, last year he was in co-ed soccer, and there were just a few players who were also from another more hard-core league (called Storm). Those players were not distributed equally among the teams, and it really pissed off the coaches who were shorted, as well as the parents. So this year (boys-only), our (female and very good) coach got heavily involved and made sure those few were distributed evenly among the teams. It has made an obvious improvement in both the game play and team morale to not have complete loser teams. Even so, there is still an ordering of teams, but it is a lot easier for 10-year-olds to handle getting beaten when they can see that they’ve been able to make a good try, and even average players can sometimes get the better of the excellent ones.

    Storm tried to recruit my kid last year, but we came to the conclusion they just want the money, average kids warm the bench and the good ones play. That seems a loser lesson to me. Plenty of time to learn to be sheeple.

    A lot of kids are competitive but not for winning, just for individual tasks while playing. Perhaps that misses the point of group play… or perhaps getting rid of fun is the real mistake.

  3. In this case the team are not being equalised. They are just misreporting the score. The kids still suffer a 20:0 defeat. This is no better for their ego. A better option in my opinion is to stream the kids so the good players are in the top league playing against each other. That way all kids will get stretched, but still have a chance of winning.

    What lesson does this teach kids? If you do badly, just lie about it.

    Cheers

    Tim…

  4. My son was in the Under 8’s last season, which is the first year when the teams are graded/streamed. Before then there were several one sided games. Once the coach even let the other team play with their subs on the pitch to even the match. No results were recorded.

    But to bring it back to a techie topic, if the presentation layer could show results as a “WIN-LOSE”, “LOSE-WIN”,’DRAW-DRAW” it would achieve much the same result without actually fibbing about the result.

  5. Interestingly enough, they’ve back-tracked on the decision and are now printing the full scores. I like to think my blog rant helped. 🙂

    Gary: Agree. If they are not printing the real scores, they could have avoided printing lies using the win/lose approach. I suspect the word “lose” is too strong for such fragile little minds. 🙂

    Cheers

    Tim…

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