A Merry Xmas and Happy New Year - 2006 round-up

Thursday, 21 December 2006

Well Christmas is nearly upon us and the kids (big and small) will be getting excited. I can’t believe that another year has nearly passed. It’s been a fantastic year for the Club and the past couple of months have been particularly busy.

The website is a superb innovation (thanks again Susan!) which will undoubtedly help communication as the Club grows. I intend to use the Blog to let you all know the latest developments behind the scenes; so much work is currently going on to lay firm foundations for the future which will benefit all our kids for years to come.

It was great getting the FA Charter Standard awarded in October, only around 10% of English Clubs have this prestigious award and it’s already paying dividends in opening up further avenues of funding. As you’ve seen plastered all over the website, Alnwick and District Sports Council rewarded our efforts by strongly supporting our 3-year expansion plan with a record grant of £1220. This opened the way for our application to the Football Foundation for a further £8500 which will fund our expansion to U-15, U-16 and U-17 11-a-side teams over 3 years in concert with a dedicated girls section. I’ve submitted the application and we should hear either way by the end of February; fingers crossed!!!

I have 5 female coaches (2 already FA Level 1 qualified) lined up for our dedicated girls section which will start with training and hopefully lead to a team in the Cramlington League next summer. Speaking of coaches’ development, 5 of us attended a coaching seminar at Newcastle United’s academy last month and we were privileged to watch a full session with the youth players lead by the academy head, Joe Joyce. Some impressive lads were on view who, with the current injury crisis, might get their chance before long. I did laugh as the Longhoughton coaches were amongst representatives from big clubs including NUFC, Darlington, Blyth Spartans and Whitley Bay but it does demonstrate how far we’ve come.

We continue to maintain very close contacts with Northumberland FA. As a result, Football Development Officer, Mark Woodall, kindly came up and ran a free (thanks Mark!) FA Level 2 coaching taster day to give us an idea of what’s involved in this highly demanding and technical course. Nine Longhoughton coaches attended and weren’t put off despite the intensive nature of the Level 2. As a result I’d like to think we could enter at least 4 candidates for this 70 hour course in 2007.

As some of you know, I am also Vice-Chair of the Glendale League and we had a committee meeting up at Wooler last Monday. The Cup format was agreed which will see each league split in 2, based on final league positions (end-January for U-14s and U-12s, March for U-10s). The 2 separate divisions at each age group will play a round–robin league with the teams ending in first and second place in their own division playing for the cup on finals day on 19th May. This will give the Glendale’s weaker teams the chance to win something in the second half of the season which is great.

I’m delighted that we are entering a second U-8s team into the league in January. The U-8s are the future and we have the strongest U-8 set-up in the Alnwick district and probably the whole of North Northumberland. Our enthusiastic U-8 coaches have also agreed to run an U-8s tournament at Wooler on finals day on 19th May which gives the Club great kudos.

That’s about all for now. I hope that gives a flavour of the massive effort going on behind the scenes to make our Club the best provider of kids’ soccer in the area.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all players and parents!!

Paul and all the coaches at Longhoughton Rangers