English Schools' Football Association

ESFA Newsletter - Friday 14th July 2006

Message from the Chairman Mr. Nigel Brown

As I embark on this year as your Chairman I feel very honoured to represent an Association with over 100 years history and a membership of 450 associations. I read with great interest the last issue of Kicks, which celebrated the E.S.F.A. national finals held at various venues up and down the country and our U18 International team's success in the Centenary Shield.

I strongly recommend and endorse for the new season the
California Raisin/ESFA Award Scheme giving recognition to all who play football in our schools. Although England's World Cup hopes were dashed yet again by penalties it clearly showed the enthusiasm, support and popularity for football in this country. I am proud that the E.S.F.A. continues to develop potential England stars but also that it provides football for boys and girls of all standards and abilities who enjoy playing the game.

I would like to remind membership that F.A. rules now stipulate that up to and including the Under 16 age group the use of repeated substitutions is mandatory. I was delighted to see many of you at the A.G.M. at the Forest Pines Hotel but would encourage those who did not make it to think about attending in 2007. The venue will be in Manchester and it promises to be a great occasion. At this juncture it would be remiss of me not to pay tribute to and thank my predecessor Kevin Wilbur for guiding the Association during the last twelve months. Kevin thoroughly enjoyed his year of office and proved to be a perfect ambassador for the E.S.F.A.

Finally I would like to thank you for all your efforts throughout the past season. Your help, support and encouragement are greatly appreciated by my Council colleagues and myself. Without your voluntary efforts this Association would not be as strong as it is. I trust that you will have a deserved break this summer and look forward to seeing many of you in the new season 2006-2007.

Nigel Brown.
Chairman

Chief Executive's Update

Competitions

Mike continues to keep you up to date with his weekly / monthly Competition Circulars. May I publicly thank both Mike and Darren for all their hard work this season (and of course in the past). With the ever expanding portfolio of competitions and more and more demanding sponsors they have both performed admirably all season.

I am working with the FA on the employment of a much needed National Competitions secretary to aid Darren and Mike in their Competitions work for next season. There are a number of new competitions including the exciting prospect of having a girls' under 11 Inter District 7 a-side competition added to the Primary Festival.

County secretaries will be interested to know that there will be a new sponsor for the under 13 competitions next season. Currently I am not at liberty to divulge the name of the sponsor, but you will all be notified in the next week or so.

Kevin Wilbur and I represented ESFA at the JETIX World Cup in Munich, Germany and what a fantastic occasion it was. For the boys and girls from The Mosslands School (Wallasey) and Matthew Arnold School (Spelthorne, Staines) it was a wonderful experience. As the boys and girls national champions the school teams represented England in this 5 a-side competition held in the Olympic Stadium in Munich, wearing England strips they had the honour of playing such great footballing countries such as Brazil, Spain, Italy and of course the host nation Germany. The girls finishing up 4th, beaten in the 3rd/4th play-off by Germany. Brazil beat Israel in the final. The boys battled manfully to finish 7th. The final was won by the USA who beat the hosts, Germany in the final.

In this our first venture with JETIX KIDS TV we could not have been happier with their attention to detail and the enormous steps they took to ensure that all taking part had a wonderful experience. Well done Karen and Michelle and lets hope we can work together for another few seasons.

Coaching and International Selection

As mentioned in my last Newsletter we are supporting the PUMA Coaching initiative, PUMA AFC. Details and an application form are included in this edition. Please not that if you have any enquiries you should, in the first instance, contact Phil Darren on phildarren@tiscali.co.uk. By the middle of August the PUMA AFC will have their own dedicated website which will handle all membership enquiries.

The Chinese are coming!! After a number of false starts it looks likely that a Chinese schools delegation will join us for our coaching week at Keele University in August. This will be the start of a bilateral agreement with the Dr Sun Youth Foundation of Shanghai, to encourage cultural activity between our two nations. It is hoped that the international under 18 schoolboy team will travel to China for matches in Beijing and Shanghai during Easter 2007.

May I also remind everyone that we are still running the Bursary Scheme where we will pay 75% of teachers' costs in attending FA Coaching / Sports Therapists courses? There is a limited budget so we operate a first come first served policy. All teachers taking advantage of this scheme are placed on a national register and are expected to support schools' football once they are qualified. This Bursary scheme is for qualified teachers only at the present time.

At the time of writing the following dates had been agreed:

• 21-25 August 2006
  Keele Coaching week
• 29 September 2006
  Regional match v. New Zealand Schools' - Manchester
• 28 October 2006
  North regional trials
• 29 October 2006
  SE regional trials
• 04 November 2006
  Midlands trials
• 05 November 2006
  SW regional trials
• 11 November 2006
  SW v SE
• 12 November 2006
  N v M
• 8-10 December 2006
  International Final 32 at Lilleshall
• 13 January 2007
  am v RAF under 25s
• 13 January 2007
  pm v PASE
• 26 January 2007
  International Team Presentation Dinner.
• 28 January 2007
  ESFA v TBC
• 11-15 February 2007
  Training week in Villareal - Spain

I will complete the fixture list in my September Newsletter when all SAFIB fixtures have been ratified.

As Mr Tony Martin (Hitchin PSFA) takes up his position as International Team Manager we welcome his deputy for the next two seasons, Mr Phil Nardiello (Coventry SFA)

Primary

Another fine day out at Keele in June produced some fine and exciting football at our Sainsbury's Primary Finals. We are still waiting to see if Sainsbury's are to pick up an option to extend their contract for another 3 years.

Thank you to all the Associations that replied to the Primary survey.

Promotion & Development (repeat)

One of the first overwhelming responses from the nationwide series of meetings was that the ESFA do not communicate with the schools within our Association. To try to rectify that we now have our 8 page Kicks magazine which is sent to all 26,000 schools in England. Many thanks to California Raisins and our Award Scheme for financing this project.

We have also recently had articles published in "PE & Sport Today" magazine and in "School Sport" magazine.

Have a look on our web site www.esfa.co.uk and you'll be surprised at the range of saleable items that are now available. And you can pay on line as well.

Goalposts (repeat)

Schools in your area are able to get a grant from the Football Foundation for the replacement of illegal or unsafe goalposts. The FA County Football Associations are coordinating this procedure and should be contacted in the first instance. There is no cap on the number of goals that can be replaced. If you need to 'change them'.

Insurance (repeat)

We have changed our insurers, but the details of our policies are the same as before. If you have any queries on insurance please contact Malcolm Alexander at Linaker, Sport & Leisure Division on 0117962 5888. In particular they are producing some very competitive rates for Public Liability cover. However, all affiliated associations come under our national policy for third party liability so long as they are acting as part of the ESFA. This includes the hosting of your annual or regular meetings held where public liability is passed onto you. If you require a copy of the Liability Certificate (now being asked for by local Councils / Schools etc) please contact Dawn in the office.

The Annual General Meeting

As requested by membership at the AGM, Council has set up a working group to look into the structure and future planning of the AGM. Three Council Members have volunteered and three other members are soon to be invited to join the group.

We were also asked to rely more heavily on electronic communication with membership (email). To that end, may I ask all District and County Secretaries to submit their email addresses to the office (unless you have already had them printed in the Handbook?)

Excellence Programme

This is a reminder to District and County Associations (and schools where appropriate) that if they enter into an agreement to play against Premier League Academy or Football League Centre of Excellence age group teams, both teams require sanction to play non-affiliated football. The ESFA affiliated team needs clearance from here in the office and the Academy/ Excellence team from their respective League HQs. Only Year 6 (under 11) and above are allowed to play 11 a-side football. If you wish to continue with playing under age children you may well find insurance invalid or in the worst case the subject of a court hearing if a parent wishes to take out a litigation case.

Adults other than Teachers (AOTTs)

District and County Secretaries are reminded that ESFA regulations only allow teams to be supervised by a fully qualified teacher working in the Education Sector or someone who is registered with ESFA as an AOTT. AOTT registration is currently only valid for one year; therefore you must re-register your AOTTs on an annual basis. There are new forms, simplified and more user friendly, this year and they are available through the office. The one big change is that so long as all the other criteria are completed AOTTs do not need to be members of FACA.