Anyone know the actual rules of this?

[pollyputthekettleon33]

My ds plays grassroots football for an under 9 team but the club he plays for has lots of other teams playing on a Saturday. There is a clubhouse on site but it doesn't open on match days, only for club functions.

I have quite bad IBS/gastro issues, usually worse in a morning. Early kick offs are becoming a nightmare for me as there is no toilet on site (apart from in the clubhouse which is locked).

This is ruining my enjoyment of watching ds play and on occasions when I've been having a bad flare up I haven't been able to take him at all.

My question is are there rules and requirements for events such as this that specify toilet facilities have to be provided? There are sometimes 100s of people there, I can't be the only one that needs the loo! I often see players popping into a bush but I couldn't do that.

I think if I knew the actual rules I might feel more confident about approaching the club and seeing if they'd open the clubhouse (still embarrassing though!) I could understand if it were a small club but as I said this is a big event every week with multiple teams playing and the facilities are there, just not accessible.

No idea if there are still rules about it sorry. Definitely sounds worth a chat though.

There's nothing online that I can find. It's just really annoying. I'm assuming the clubhouse isn't open for security reasons and because it would probably need cleaning afterwards but it feels inconsiderate to everyone who attends.

Weird that they wouldn't open the toilets on a match day when they're there anyway. I would email the club and ask straight out whether the toilets could please be made available on match days. It's entirely understandable that you might not want to mention your medical condition, and many probably wouldn't. Personally, I would consider making some reference to having a condition which was making it difficult to take my child along without facilities being available, and that it would be a shame for him to be excluded from participating in the club by his parent's medical condition.

I don’t think there is a requirement my DS has been playing grassroots football since he was 5 and now he is 15 and honestly some of his matches have literally been a football pitch in the middle of nowhere, no club house at all…
these are grassroots FA affiliated clubs - so assume the FA wouldn’t allow them to operate under the FA banner of they weren’t providing the required facilities.

I think it would be problematic to open the clubhouse as the toilets are located right at the back past the function room, kitchen, bar etc and it could a) pose a security issue if there's nobody free to watch the place and b) create a lot of mud and mess with people trampling through.

But still it's pretty annoying knowing that they are there but not being able to access them when I really need to! I spend a lot of my time at this place as he also trains there twice a week and it's becoming a real problem for me now.

Unfortunately the only rules about toilets and grassroots football is that if they have a girls team playing they need facilities for the team to use. This is due to the girls not being able to have a wee in a hedge like boys can. Parents/spectators can't always use the facilities if the toilet is in a changing room as no-one can go in when they are changing and it's locked when they are out of it.

Thanks I did suspect this might be the case, it just seems astonishing to me when there are so many people there on a weekly basis, often for hours at a time.

It might be worth starting a conversation with them, there might be something they can change. Our club house we managed to find that if we unlocked a certain door then only the toilets and changing rooms were accessible and the rest of the building still secure.

they can’t look into it if they don’t realise it’s a problem