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Soccer followers in Tipperary will be very aware of a significant change affecting the game in the county. The end has come for the traditional September-May soccer season and after a mini season that began in September and has just ended Schoolboy soccer in Tipperary has gone into hibernation. Summer soccer or Calender soccer to give it it's proper name, will be introduced in South Tipperary in March 2018 and will run until November with a mid season break to be determined. It's a signficant change and will no doubt present many challenges.
I think the first point that should be made is that this change isn't optional. Recommendation 10 of the FAI Player Development Plan (https://www.fai.ie/sites/default/files/atoms/files/PDP%20%28all%20formats%29%20PDF.pdf) proposes moving soccer towards a consistent football calender from March to November across all age groups. The FAI points out the following advantages of such a move:
- Player development would be improved through playing on better quality services and weather conditions,
- Less matches will be cancelled,
- Evening matches can be spread out,
- Better access to players in off season for Emerging Talent Programme,
- Allows for multiple matches on same pitch on same evening,
- More spectators,
- Reduced costs for lighting
- Pitches are protected in the winter.
The most obvious benefits are better quality playing pitches and weather conditions. The fact that matches will no longer be confined to weekends but can be played on week nights will be of huge benefit to clubs and leagues and should lead to a significant reduction in the number of games being cancelled. Equally important for clubs is the greater availabilty of tranining times. During the winter a lot of clubs are dependent on All Weather facilities but availability of prime time slots are limited as clubs must keep slots available for rental as All Weather pitches are an important source of income for all soccer clubs. For Clonmel Celtic for example, this could mean more of our Schoolboy teams opting to train in Ferryhouse on week day evenings thus freeing up more slots on the All Weather that could potentially further boost income collection. With an increased possibility of more training times due to the long summer evenings some teams might decide to do additional training sessions and this also can only be a positive. In simple terms the more time you spend doing something the better you will become as it. For our youngest age groups summer soccer has a lot of attractions. Training sessions on very cold and wet mornings can be diffilcult for 6 and 7 year olds. Whereas older children are more inclined to move about and keep warm younger children who are only beginning to learn the game tend to be more stationary and will feel the cold more. This can lead to higher drop out rates. Similarly parents who drop their children to training but don't want to stand around in the cold might now be more inclined to hang around and who knows may even offer to help out!!!!
However even soccer's governing body in Ireland (FAI) recognize that there are serious challenges to Calender Soccer in Ireland. There is no doubting that GAA is a major summer sport in Ireland and a lot of children currently play both sports helped no doubt by the fact that currently the two sports have different seasons. However having said that there is already significant overlap in the soccer and the GAA season. However summer soccer will no doubt lead to a potential increase in games and training times clashing. Although it would be ideal if children can continue to play both sports there is an increasing likelihood that children may find themselves having to choose at an earlier age. There has been suggestions that this is what the FAI is actually trying to do i.e. getting young players to commit to soccer at an earlier age and then more time and effort can be put into their development. Although there may be some merit in this theory for smaller clubs, especially those outside Dublin, it make actually lead to their demise. Of course there is the potential for co-operation between the governing sporting bodies at county level to try to facilitate players continuing to play both sports as long as they can. A good example of this would be Achill Rovers from Mayo who won the FAI Club of the Year in 2015 (Clonmel Celtic were one of the 7 runners up). The governing bodies of the three main sports on the island i.e. soccer, GAA and boxing met and agreed to organize their respective season schedules in such a way that children could continue their participation in all three sports if this is what they wanted. However it's hard to see such an arrangement working in a bigger county like Tipperary where although there is one governing soccer body there are a number of different GAA bodies covering the same functional area. Having said that there is plenty of evidence of exisiting co-operation between local GAA and soccer clubs in scheduling training and matches etc to avoid clashes but I think it's fair to say there is a limit to how well this will work.
I think the focus should not be entirely on going 'head to head' with the GAA and better weather and long summer evenings bring other attractions to children that might effect their particpation in soccer. Apart from exams, we'll have holidays and summer breaks to contend with and you might have situations where a team is never able to field it's strongest 11 during the summer for different reasons. This will be frustrating for coaches and let's not forget that while the move might be primarily about developing young players the coaches have an important role to play. And we must remember these are all volunteers already giving up valuable time. I mentioned earlier that one of the main benefits of summer soccer is the possibilty of more training sessions fro children. However this may not always be possible if coaches are unable to give up anymore of their time.
Tipperary is not the first county to introduce summer soccer and of course leagues can learn from the experiences of others who have already gone down this path. Seemingly it has been a succes in Mayo but can it really succeed in a strong GAA county like Tipperary? This remains to be seen. Personally, I'm not sure about the move but I've always been a bit of a traditionalist. Whatevers happens it will be the same volunteers up and down the country selfishly putting in the hours and for this we should be eternally grateful. Not to finish on a negative note but the view of a poster on a social media site on the subject of summer soccer:
''The whole point of this scheme is to try to ensure that seasons are not disrupted by weather. Instead they are going to be disrupted by holidays and the big long break. Had this nonesense been implemented this year, the season would have begun with the multiple postponements caused by Storm Emma, eventually started in early April, petered out for exam time and summer break before getting going properly in late August - just like it used to be. Progress my eye''