Dear Editor
In relation to this year’s Euros, it was difficult to watch yet another miserable tournament performance by Scotland.
Another glorious failure. In response, we will now no doubt have the obligatory ‘McLeish Report’ highlighting the problems of ‘grassroots’ football etc. etc.
That said, through watching my 11 year old grandson play football, it is obvious that we still have the desire, commitment and passion for our national game.
Our football doesn’t need to ‘come home’. It is home. It’s always been home, but we just need to improve our housekeeping.
Outwith structured football games, our kids have little or no opportunity to play football locally.
Only last week, I watched some children precariously trying to scale the fence of one of our Three Towns Astro pitches.
Why, I would ask, are our kids continually locked out of these facilities?
Why should they need to scale fences?
They lie unused and locked for the majority of the week.
We don’t need Henry McLeish to tell us that
grassroots football should be rooted firmly in our communities.
Kids football isn’t always rooted in organised football teams (who often tend to stop playing and training during the summer) or organised summer training camps that are prohibitive to less affluent families.
We need to provide, open and share the resources we currently have, for both organized football and for kids just getting together to play football (at no cost).
We need to support and encourage this at every opportunity.
We could start, at the very least, by letting our kids access the local Astro turfs free of charge and accessible at any point when they are not being used.
This is now, or should be, the modern equivalent of the “street football” which produced numerous world class Scottish players in the past.
Enough talking the talk.
Allan Weaver
8G South Crescent Road,
Ardrossan
KA22 8DU
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