Grassroots football is the lifeblood of the game in England. Whilst all the focus may be on the mega-rich Premier league clubs and the myriad clubs who have slipped into faded glory status littered throughout the football league, it is the thirty five thousand plus amateur clubs, such as Copmanthorpe FC, who keep the game alive. Whilst the English game, like so many other leagues the world over, has seen a massive increase in foreign players, grassroots football has never been more important than now.
Every single future English football fan, player or coach somehow found a passion for the game. You don’t just wake up one day at age eleven and have a host of professional clubs beating a path to your doorway. That passion was instilled years before when you turned out for your local club. Everything you know about the game was forged on the boggy playing fields in the local leagues. Every Wayne Rooney or Steven Gerrard has a debt of gratitude to pay towards those people who, variously, became secretaries, chairmen, club officers, coaches, administrators, kit men, drivers and supporters of that small local club. The game would cease to exist if it were not for these people.
Copmanthorpe Football Club is the same as every other amateur club in the land. People give up their valuable spare time, sometimes with little in the way of recognition, to keep the club going by running a team. Every single one of them has lost sleep fretting over finding new players, getting the team tactics right, organising fixtures or finding a sponsor to buy a kit. That is passion for you! Who else would take on a completely unpaid job with the responsibility of managing everything to do with a football team, whether they are seven year olds or adults? And if that is not enough, when things are not going to plan, they are the ones who usually get the grief!
So when you turn up for your next match, spare a thought for the people who make your team happen, think about what they do for your club and give them a smile and offer some help. And if you don’t know who they are, they’re probably the one who is in the corner of the rain-lashed field struggling against hope to put up the nets!
