My boy plays for The Watling Club under 9 football team. They've had a great season and have just won the Harrow & District Under 9 5th division. As you might imagine, I'm a rather proud Dad! At training on Wednesday, I was chatting with the club secretary and other club officials. Watling is affiliated to Barnet Council and the subject of the paperwork came up.
Let me give you a couple of examples of some of the new bureaucracy that is coming in.
Parental consent forms required for every child for every away game.
Risk assessments for all venues that boys play at.
A blanket consent to say "yes it's OK for my boy to play" is no longer good enough. This means that for our team of 16 players, who play 20 away games, 320 forms are required a season.
As for the risk assessment, the majority of the grounds are council property. They already have risk assessments. The rest are owned by clubs or firms, again requiring assessments for insurance. For Watling a council official came down to Montrose Park and performed a risk assessment with the club. Now our secretary takes all of this as part and parcel of the hasle of running a club, but I ask - how much does all this cost and what does it achieve?
One thing it certainly does is put many people off. Who does the risk assessment for the cost of the clubs folding. All the kids becoming couch potatoes. All the kids falling in with the wrong crowd.
It seems to me that all of this bureaucracy is a complete waste of time and money. It achieves nothing useful and denies children the chance to develop themselves. I've broken limbs playing football. It wasn't nice, but it was worth it
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