NG16 JUNE/JULY 2021

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Football in a time of Covid For many years I have had a long standing love of football. Despite only watching the odd game on TV in my formative years (back when you were lucky if there was one game a month on the telly and the FA Cup final really was the biggest football event of the year) I blundered into a sport which still holds me in its thrall. And in the last few years it has become even more important to me as my son is absolutely obsessed with the game. It started a few years ago when one of our local teams was looking for a goalkeeper. Apparently at that age goalkeepers are hard to find as kids just want to belt the ball into the net. Fortunately my lad enjoyed the idea of flinging himself around in muddy goalmouths so he got the gig. Over time he decided he wanted to have a bit more involvement in games as the team he played for were pretty good and there’s only so many wet Sundays that you want to be shivering in goal. So he became a defender, and then a midfielder. Now he plays for two teams so our Saturday and Sunday mornings are completely accounted for, as well as two evenings a week training. So you’d think there was no more time for football right? Well, you’d be quite wrong there... Rewind back to March last year and his Sunday team needed a coach. As parents, we wanted the team to continue and I was asked to take on the team. In hindsight I think this was mostly due to the fact that I loved a bit of admin and appeared organised, but to be honest I was really looking forward to the challenge. Running a Sunday League team was a complete mystery to me, as a parent I normally just paid the subs and turned up to watch the games. Now I was responsible for getting the team organised, running training, liaising with other teams, getting the players registered, making sure subs were paid, pumping up the footballs and understanding how to work with the club that my team were part of. And then there was Covid. If you ever wanted to pick a time to start running a football team, doing it as a global pandemic ripped through youth sports may not have been the ideal scenario. As well as working out how to run a team I now had to understand all of the various paperwork and rules that accompanied Covid. No doubt the same as every other youth coach in the country this meant a huge change in how teams and leagues would be run. Everything changed, games were postponed, we had no idea when we were able to play again, and the kids went months without seeing each other. I can only speak for my club, but the support that Arnold Town FC offered was fantastic. They bent over backwards to help all of us navigate the new rules and keep us going when we didn’t know what was happening next. And then we got the news that we could start training again. Everyone was delighted to be back, we’d all had different experiences of lockdown but once the first football was kicked we got our own bit of normality back. We’ve been really lucky that most of our kids have played together for a few years, and the new ones that have come in have settled really quickly. And this goes for the parents too. It’s common to only hear the negative side of overly competitive parents in Sunday League but my experience has been one of total support. They’ve all helped out with training, running the line, or even refereeing the odd game. And the team are doing okay on the pitch too. I’m no tactical mastermind but we win our fair share and compete even when we lose. More importantly we all enjoy it together. The kids are all learning and seeing them develop is amazing and the parents are all on board with the philosophy that everyone gets to play, no matter their ability. So, in hindsight I couldn’t have picked a worse time to start coaching a football team. But on the other hand it’s been a phenomenal experience and probably stopped me from going insane in the last year or so. Edging into my forties, I’m a wrangler of two young children who are either going to keep me eternally young or drive me to an early grave. I’ll be sharing some of my experiences of parenthood and my terrible attempts at staying relevant! noonelikessubtitles@gmail.com Dominic Murray
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