Grassroots football question

[bluebell8329]

Apologies if this isn’t the right place….

My DD is part of a grassroots football team, the team is part of a club which has 6 teams of varying ages. Each team has at least two coaches. The club have now decided that each team needs to pay for the coaches to do their coaching qualifications. The majority of the team think the club should pay…..

any advice would be appreciated.

Well I suspect that depends on how finances are set up at your club.

If your subs go to the club, then the club should pay.
If your subs go to the Team, then the Team should pay.

If there is a situation where the subs go to the Team and then each Team pays £X per month, or per year to the club then it is going to depend how much that is and what it is there to cover.

We can't answer your question without knowing how the rest of the finances work out.

As above my first question would be how much do you pay?
Also remember most clubs are ran by volunteers and get no funding aside from subs, the cost of running a club can be really high, it could be they are struggling for money.
So for example we pay £160 per year this includes all referees for matches, managers training, DB checks etc. Kit is paid for by the sponsors which each team has to sort out. Of they can get sponsors them the have to fund the kit themselves.
What coaching is it they want the parents to pay for? If the coach is already coaching I would expect them to have the level 1 qualification already.
They do have to renew their safeguarding and first aid qualifications and their DB check.

My son plays for a team which is affiliated to a much bigger club (numerous teams at all ages, including adults). Although we pay subs direct to the team, the main club pays for coaching, DBS, other extras. Not sure where the money comes from. Sponsorship? Adult subs? Each child pays a £25 each year to get their fa number, so maybe some of that goes to the club.

The club should pay. You pay your subs to them, they ‘employ’ the coach.Parents can’t be expected to cough up every time a coach decides to move on.

It's tricky as all clubs are different, my sons, of which my husband is a coach is
huge and gets a lot of local support and fundraising.
Other clubs in the area don't have the same benefits and during matches are selling raffle tickets, coffee's etc to raise money to pay the ref and pay for equipment.
Then we have other clubs that are run like business's with high subs £25 a month per child and they all get kits, boot bags, water bottles for that but don't need to do any fundraising.

Every club my kids have played for, coaches training and checks have been paid for by the club out of the annual fee ( £180 per year for current club). There are a few things that we have to pay the coaches for directly like our share of tournament entry fees or replacement lost kit but nothing much.

The club are very transparent- when you sign up they give you a list of what is covered by the annual fee and what is not.

In most instances the coach is a volunteer not employed. If they move to a different club their qualification goes with them, no need to retrain.

Thanks for all of the replies. So each child pays subs each month; £35, £25 goes to the club and £10 the team keeps, this covers pitch fees etc. The team has to pay ref fees each week and fundraise for anything else such as new kits, training equipment etc.

£35 a month per child is a lot and much more expensive than any grassroots or community clubs I've come across. It's more in line with what the football coaching businesses charge round here - but these employ qualified professional coaches, have other costs like sales and marketing and are run to make a profit

Say there's 10 kids in the team that's £350 per team month! They should definitely be paying for coaches training and qualifications out of that.

There’s between 8-10 players per team, the club has 8 teams ranging from under 7 to under 11.

That's very expensive subs we pay £165 per year! Is it a franchise or business rather than a grass roots team? If it was me I'd be looking elsewhere as that's extortionate and is want to know where all that money was going.

Wow, that's expensive.

However, to answer your question, in the case of a club taking £25 per month from every player (even allowing for a hardship fund) then there is no question that the club should be paying for the training courses.

I think I'd be asking to see their accounts from the most recent year end. They must be taking in a lot of money.

If they are volunteers they should not pay themselves. At DS swimming club the coaches training is paid for by his club and volunteers have to agree to continue to volunteer for 2 years or to repay the club for the training. I think this is fair.

The query is the club want the parents to pay for it whilst charging £25 a month per child, which is super expensive for a football club