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Your JUNIOR CLUB - What Do They Do To Get Youth Interested ?


Bestsinceslicebread

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What Does Your JUNIOR CLUB Do To Get Youth Interested ?

We all know, especially in junior football, quite a lot are stuck in their ways and don't like change, especially the older supporter, this is not always a bad thing and sometimes understandable  but time never stands still and we have to progress and every team will need players in 2, 5, 10 years time to continue, so you obviously have to get them for somewhere and a good youth policy of some kind helps.  I have worked with Rossvale, Pollok and Clydebank Youth academies and watched how they operate with the junior teams, seen some great things, some things I don't like but all in all they are trying their best.

For me the biggest effect for your club can be stimulating the youths of tomorrow that they want to play for your club. I am a Benburb supporter, why because I remember standing at Tinto park in 1980 at 10 year old, holding my dads hand, god rest his soul, waiting on the buses to take us to Hampden park for the Scottish cup final. I stood there and said to my dad, "this is the team I want to play for", which eventually I did went onto play and captain.  This effect on the youth is invaluable to many teams if they only put it to good use.  I was at Dalry recently and took my 10 year old nephew to the home game v St Rochs. I paid my fee and he got in for free and the ticketer gave me a blue ticket for my nephew and with this, it meant he got a free burger or hotdog, free chips, a can of juice and a bag of chips. he came away from a mental game, 6.5 to Dalry and he said he loved it, (even being soaked in the rain), and wanted to go to all Dalry matches. He went to his School the next day and told all his friends and then recently my sister told me that 3 of his friends are coming to a Dalry game with my nephew to watch Dalry play.  This is now in his mind to be part of Dalry and so many other clubs should think of these ideas or others to get more youths interested n their teams  PollokFc allow all Youth academy players in for nothing and you can see the effect this have with the interest because if the lads play at a different times then they will be at the first team game screaming for Pollok and then at half time you see all the kids  on the park playing, wanting to be like their football stars.

So do you think your junior team is doing enough for the youths of tomorrow, either working with the youth teams or giving kids freebies at games, meeting players etc.. ?
Any ideas do share as it helps to keep as these boys and girls in football in the future and if the club benefit with some of them growing up and playing for them then even better.

Just wanna say well done to Dalry, its a great idea and I'm sure the effect will be so beneficial to Dalry in the future (thumb)

Edited by Bestsinceslicebread
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Rob Roy and Rossvale (and I assume many more) offer a kids a chance to be a match day mascot. I like the ideas clubs have of under 16s going free.

I'm going to be taking my daughters to Rob Roy games once they're old enough and hopefully they'll want to keep on going.

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I spoke to the Pollok keeper, Jordan, recently who said that the manager has asked each of the first team players to pick an academy team and then every so often turn up at their training sessions and either just to show face and chat with the lads or participate in some way.  Not sure how far this has gone yet but its a good idea and definitely will have  a good effect on the youth players wanting to become first team players like the current stars.  I will say Jordan is an advocate of the youth teams at Pollok and has turned up quite a few times off his own back to come and watch some of the Pollok youth teams over the years.  I remember he came in the rain to watch the 03s play against BSC and all the young players watching, some players from the younger teams surrounded Jordan at times and they all loved it that he way there to watch.

Edited by Bestsinceslicebread
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2 hours ago, Bestsinceslicebread said:

I spoke to the Pollok keeper, Jordan, recently who said that the manager has asked each of the first team players to pick an academy team and then every so often turn up at their training session and either just to show face and chat with the lads or participate in some way.  Not sure how far this has gone yet but its a good idea and definitely will have  a good effect on the youth players wanting to become first team players like the current stars.  I will say Jordan is an advocate of the youth teams at Pollo and has turned up quite a few times off his own back to come and watch some of the Pollok youth teams over the years.  I remember he came in the rain to watch the 03s play against BSC and all the young players watching, some players from the younger teams surrounded Jordan at times and they all loved it that he way there to watch.

Wouldn’t expect anything less from Jordan true gent

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At Clydebank we are a very new academy, growing from 0 players in 2015 to around 250 from Development squad age right down to U8. 

Every academy player gets in for free when they were their tracksuit. I think a strong academy is key to the healthy future of clubs at our level. For all our players, playing for Clydebank is a very realistic ambition. 

Think it’s important that they value the club they are at, that it means something. Our goal is that every academy player understands the meaning of the club badge and our key values by the end of this year. 

We won’t really see how successful the project is for a good few years until the younger generation grow up, but so far attendance from the academy teams has been great at the new Holm Park. 

Long make it continue, and we keep progressing players through from the development squad into the first team. 

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we at buffs have distributed season tickets to all kids in our local primary. We also let any kids of primary school in for free. The free season ticket however appears to be working well as it's more of an invitation to the kids to come to our games rather just an open access for any kid. They feel as if they are a part of something by giving them them the season tickets. People also explicitly love being given free stuff and will be more inclined to come along to make use of their free thin

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