Junior Football – When safeguarding is discriminatory
27 Friday Mar 2015
Posted Family, motherhood, life
in27 Friday Mar 2015
Posted Family, motherhood, life
in27 Friday Mar 2015
Posted Family, motherhood, life
in27 Friday Mar 2015
Posted Family, life, motherhood
inWhen Safeguarding is discriminatory..
Recently we received a call from my sons’ coach at a local junior football club. He stated that my two son’s shouldn’t attend anymore as one was too small, not progressing and the coach was concerned he would get injured in training and matches. The other was not progressing and didn’t listen.
This seemed the most bizarre use of discrimination, suggesting that someone could be too small to play in an age appropriate club, and a child with grommets wasn’t listening, so I challenged this at club level by contacting the Chair, welfare officer and mini football coordinator. They made suitable sympathetic comments by phone, seeming to be supportive and keen to meet with us to investigate this further. We entered the meeting fully expecting some form of apology, an acknowledgement of a potential poor decision and some discussion with the coach about how to improve their practice of selecting players, without using derogatory or discriminating language.
However in the meeting we were in for a shock. The club quickly closed ranks, refused to comment and sat in silence whilst the coach changed his story and claimed he was safeguarding my son to protect him from injury, hence he had removed him from the club. As we were unaware of any injuries for our son, this came as a surprise. The coach claimed we weren’t present at training every time he had been injured. He believed he was doing a service to our son that we clearly weren’t – protecting him from injuries. He also completely backtracked on my second son as I pointed out he was a prolific goal scorer and won parent man of matches. Suddenly this child was ‘talented’ and he just presumed we wouldn’t want to bring one child without the other to training and matches.
This club regularly boast on social networking sites about their inclusiveness and belief that all children should play to enjoy, so we were astounded when the club supported the manager’s decision to remove both boys from the team. In a last minute attempt to soothe us, they offered academy training to try and help them improve their skills. (The get out plan)
Other than a whispered conversation at the car park, out of earshot from the manager, suggesting that our complaints would be taken on board, this coach, with all his discriminatory excuses, was supported by the club in his decisions.
We left the meeting feeling that instead of protecting our young boys, safeguarding policy had been used to specifically discriminate against them. I requested the first aid logs of all of these ‘injuries’ that we’d never heard about, the valuable evidence that had caused the coach to ‘kick’ him out of the club. (Excuse the pun)
I challenged this at Youth FA level and when they investigated, the club claimed that the meeting had gone well and at no point was the term ‘small’ even used. The FA were as keen for closure on the matter as we were, so after I explained what had actually happened at the meeting, they requested that the club send us a final letter and apology (a month later), with first aid logs attached. At first glance I was pleased to receive an apology for the upset caused to the boys, and I read with interest the all important first aid reports that held the key as to why my child had been asked to leave the club. They were, of course, completely fictitious. There were 5 instances of injuries, involving both boys, with ‘no parent present’, 4 of which I could immediately discard as we, the parents, had been present at those matches and training sessions. We had witnessed no such injuries and they were clearly fabricated. One occasion our friend had taken our boys to training, when we were unable to (and didn’t want to let down the club by not attending). That friend also confirmed that the specified injury did not take place whilst he was present throughout the training session.
It would appear that our child was removed from the club to safeguard him from fictitious injuries that the coach had created in order to get rid of him. Safeguarding, used as a reason to discriminate against my son.Safeguarding at its most destructive. Safeguarding, completely misinterpreted and abused to support a poor decision in children’s football.
What has this taught me about the state of junior football? That there are a host of inexperienced and unknowledgeable people looking after our children at a local club near you. Select your club with care. It may be the luck of the coach; at this club there are inclusive coaches and there are appalling ones. However the club itself appears to have no control over its coaches and is unwilling to challenge poor behaviour. Herein lies the lesson: we as parents should always challenge this. Children must be protected, included, encouraged, nurtured and developed, because no one is born a ‘Ronaldo’. They start at grassroots level, at their local junior football club, with an ‘enthusiast’ coach who can make or sadly break them.