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Lincolnshire FA Football United County Conference 2009
On Wednesday 22nd April 2009 at Lincoln city Football Club the Lincolnshire County Football Association delivered its annual ‘Football United’ County Conference for the grassroots community of Lincolnshire. The event saw over 100 people from different areas of grassroots football attend to hear from speakers from the FA and Football Foundation.
The conference was an opportunity for the grassroots of Lincolnshire to get together and listen to senior figures from the FA and Football Foundation talk about what has been going on over the past year and also any changes that were on the horizon which could affect clubs and leagues. Furthermore there was an opportunity for coaches to observe a session delivered by the FA Skills team to further their knowledge and improve their coaching.
The evening started with a talk by Kelly Simmons MBE (FA Head of Football Development) where she updated the audience on how the FA’s National Game Strategy had taken affect across the country. Kelly also informed everyone how the FA are planning to take year 2 forward and look to build upon the successful work of the County FA’s and increase the number of teams playing football, referees and Charter Standard Clubs. Kelly demonstrated to the audience that the work we are doing in Lincolnshire either meets or exceeds the national averages and congratulated the county for the excellent work that not only the County FA staff is doing but also the clubs and leagues do on a daily basis. It was a great honour for Lincolnshire to have Kelly Simmons MBE attend the event as having a national manager delivering the FA message and current situation raises the profile of our event.
After Kelly Simmons, the attendees were split into coaches and administrators where the coaches went firstly to listen to Mark Kearney, Team Leader of the Nottinghamshire Skills Team about the developments in Coach Education and the introduction of the new FA Youth Award. Afterwards, Mark took the coaches onto the astro turf and delivered a session using the Lincoln City Girls Centre of Excellence players. Mark then delivered a coaching session around attacking principles and guided the watching coaches around the session. This gave the coaches a chance to observe and then ask any Mark any questions relating to the session or other coaching matters. The administrators on the other hand had two workshops delivered by Susan Brown, Football Foundation Community Manager for the East Midlands and Mick Baikie, East Midlands FA Regional Development Manager. Susan updated the conference on the changes that have been taking place within the Football Foundation in regards to the Small Grants Scheme. The Football Foundation have now changed the name of this funding stream to ‘Grow the Game’ in which Susan explained all the new criteria which will be coming into affect before the start of the new season. Straight after this, Mick Baikie delivered a workshop on the new FA Charter Standard criteria as the changes to the criteria affect both current and new clubs. All of these workshops were very well received by the attendees and felt they were up dated to the current situation of different projects that can affect the grassroots community.
After the workshops were complete, Kelly Simmons MBE, Mark Kearney, Susan Brown, Mick Baikie and Gary Johnson took part in ‘Ask the Panel’ which gave the conference the chance to ask questions surrounding topics that affect clubs. A variety of questions were asked from Coach Education to Girls and Women’s football which caused some healthy debate and enabled clubs and leagues to air their views in a constructive manner and put the panel under a little bit of pressure.
Workshops were not the only part of the conference as to make it a bit more professional we invited a number of companies to advertise their products. The companies and provided a stall for people to visit was a new sports drink, Orbana, a shin pad manufacturer, Revolution Soccer and inflatable goal manufacturer, Igoal. To add to the evening will utilised one of the companies, Igoal, and set them a challenge which broke the conference up and brought a light hearted element to the evening. We set Paul McArtney the challenge of inflating and deflating his product (a mini soccer goal) within 5 minutes. With the challenge set he embarked on his mission and completed the challenge within 4 minutes which is a new record. Many of the audience had not seen one of these inflatable goals and were amazed to how easy it is to use and also the benefits of the goal.
The final part of the evening was a raffle of which the Lincolnshire FA had provided a number of prizes ranging from a free coaching place to Lincolnshire FA clothing. All prizes were well received by the winners who hopefully will take full advantage of them.
The feedback we received from the conference was very positive and by all accounts the conference was enjoyed by all and look forward to what is to come from the Lincolnshire CFA during the next year.
We would like to thank everyone who was involved in the delivery of the conference, Kelly Simmons MBE, Mick Baikie, Susan Brown, Mark Kearney, Lincoln City Girls Centre of Excellence, Lincoln City Football in the Community, Paul McArtney, Mark Palmer and Daymon Nicholson as without your input and delivery the conference would not have been a success.
Finally we would like to thank all the people who attended the conference. It was fantastic to see so many people from around the Lincolnshire and we hope you all took something back to your club to use over the next season. Also I would like to thank the Lincolnshire CFA Council Members who attended, Norman Saywell (President), Ray Tinkler (Chairman), Ray Hewson (Vice Chairman), Reg Jackson, Tony Drinkall, Ken Stones, Steve Lilley and Steve Asher. We hope you found the evening enjoyable and worthwhile.