Tuesday, August 05, 2008

For crying out loud

An under-15's cup final. A great day for all involved. A special day for the youngsters.

And so it comes to pass that, as Leith Athletic beat Ayr Boswell in the Edinburgh International Soccer Tournament on Sunday, the Ayr manager is sent off and one of the players headbutts the referee.

Absolutely brilliant. And we wonder why we don't bring many youngsters through these days. It seems the touchline parents are still alive and well. No doubt the professional players who question each decision will be blamed. I'd say the boy probably has some issues that need to be worked through. But the manager that got sent off must take a large portion of the blame.

Would you expose your child to this?

I'm getting old and reactionary but I'd ban every Ayr Boswell team at all age groups for a year. That might, just might, send out a message.

6 comments:

  1. wanna xchange link?
    hit me back at my blog
    http://sambalfootball.wordpress.com/
    mine about singapore football

    ReplyDelete
  2. Sadly I have to expose my child to this as I run a team at the same age group and in the same area as this team. It will be no surprise to know that this is not the first time that this team have been in situations like this.

    However, two bad coaches should not affect the other 30 coaches and 300 children that are invloved with Ayr Boswell, a club with a long tradition. Your remedy of banning the club would kill off football for all these wee boys and let the lunatics at the side of one team in the club dam the lot.

    There is no excusing the behaviour of the player and the team official. The SYFA will not let this go by with a minor punishment. The maximum ban for the player is 10 years and this will follow him as he goes into senior football.

    There is a real need for all in youth football to manage touchline behaviour and this episode will hopefully raise this issue further up the scale.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sadly I have to expose my child to this as I run a team at the same age group and in the same area as this team. It will be no surprise to know that this is not the first time that this team have been in situations like this.

    However, two bad coaches should not affect the other 30 coaches and 300 children that are invloved with Ayr Boswell, a club with a long tradition. Your remedy of banning the club would kill off football for all these wee boys and let the lunatics at the side of one team in the club dam the lot.

    There is no excusing the behaviour of the player and the team official. The SYFA will not let this go by with a minor punishment. The maximum ban for the player is 10 years and this will follow him as he goes into senior football.

    There is a real need for all in youth football to manage touchline behaviour and this episode will hopefully raise this issue further up the scale.

    ReplyDelete
  4. You're right of course banning the club as a whole would be unfair. The story caught me on a bad day.

    But I think there has to be some very strict punishments for those involved.

    Interesting, but not surprising, that there is some history of this kind of thing from this side.

    Thanks for your comment

    ReplyDelete
  5. I believe that football in Ayrshire suffers from this kind of problem at a lot of levels - aren't the Ayrshire Junior leagues notorious for running battles between the fans?

    ReplyDelete
  6. Excellent information. This sounds exactly like what I've been looking for.

    ReplyDelete