AIBU to expect there to be facilities?!

[WobbleYourHead]

DS has just taken up junior football (under 9s if that makes a difference). They train once a week and play matches on a Sunday.
Their training ground and "home" pitch is at a local(ish) school but there's quite often no access to facilities.
I'm not expecting the world but WIBU to at least have access to a toilet?!
Training isn't too bad as it's only an hour but on match days we could be here for almost 3 hours!
It's our first venture into junior football (I've resisted until now) and wondered if this is the norm?!

[CasperGutman]

YANBU. I don't know what's normal, but I wouldn't spend 3 hours with primary children without access to a loo, and I wouldn't expect others to either!

[WeAllHaveWings]

wait until you go to all day tournaments with hundreds of players and parents, they usually provide 4-5 unisex portaloos that you can smell from 30ft away

[WobbleYourHead]

Wings but I DD wouldn't need to go if we knew toilets were available.

[happypoobum]

YANBU - it was the same when DS played football. I even had to drive home in the middle of a game once to go to the loo

[mailfuckoff]

Where my dc train the facilities have been locked up as the club house pushed up the fees by many thousands so the club cannot afford it. It's a large public field and a busy has had to be used on occasion . No it's not ideal!

[HereIAm20]

How can under 9s football be 3 hours when at that age it is only a 30 minute match. Are you there for older age groups too?

[Scorbus]

My DD did an activity at a local secondary school that hired out the field for football. The footballers were not allowed into the building because they trashed the facilities 3 times.

[TantrumsAndBalloons]

My boys both started playing for teams aged 7- they are now 13 and 18
We quickly learnt which grounds had toilets, somewhere to buy a cup of tea etc and which were just in the middle of a field with nothing around for ages.

There's no requirement to provide any sort of facilities, at that age matches are fairly short anyway so just have a wee before you do and invest in a good travel mug.

Thankfully once mine got to u13 football they both played in the EJA league where the club has to have a stadium pitch and hospitality so we know we can sit down, buy a cup of tea and go to the loo

[Stillunexpected]

Usually tricky when you are using a school or some facility which is not a dedicated football club. Schools are trying to make a bit of money from their sports facilities but if the school isn't usually open it costs more in caretaker salary to open the building up to provide access to toilets than they are charging for the hire of the field. At our primary school for instance, you also have to pass through the school yard (with access to all the playground equipment) to get to the toilets. It's an unnecessary insurance risk.

[monkeysox]

Yanbu. What if one of them needs a poo.

[PatriciaHolm]

DS has played in a team for about 3 years and this is fairly normal. Our home pitch has no facilities.

[Stillunexpected]

It's not unreasonable to expect access to facilities but if this became a condition of hire all that would happen is that facilities which are already thin on the ground would become almost non-existent. It's not worth the cost or risk to some schools to open up their toilets and it's not even possible at some of the football grounds which we have visited in the past, which are basically a field in the middle of nowhere.

[MumOnTheRunCatchingUp]

Access for you.... Or the footie teams?

[jelliebelly]

YANBU but it's quite common I think. One of mine plays rugby and the club facilities are generally much better!

[LockedOutOfMN]

You're not being unreasonable, OP, but in my experience it's quite normal for there to be no facilities.

You could always ask the club and they can find out what the cost would be of obtaining use of the facilities then perhaps survey parents to see whether they'd be willing to pay x extra per season for the toilets, etc.

[WobbleYourHead]

Here the games so far have been 30 mins each way. They play 2 (DS is nearly always in second game but even if not they're expected to stick around), have to be there 30 minutes prior to kick off so when change over has been taken into account it's pushing 3 hours.

mum ideally both but currently access for neither.

DCs currently play cricket (have done for a while) and ALL grounds have facilities, most usually are flogging bacon butties and cuppas too so we've probably been spoilt in that respect.

[Stillunexpected]

Cricket has facilities because you are playing at a club or possibly a private school with a clubhouse. You don't find cricket matches taking place in something that may be little more than a fairly flat field.

[WobbleYourHead]

Some cricket here (up north) is still played on public playing fields but even then there's still toilets.

I suppose I just wasn't prepared.