Children playing both football and cricket wasn’t just unheard of, it was the norm for many years, with one season starting as one ends. Has that changed and are children being forced to choose between the two sports?
Traditionally, the cricket season begins in mid-April, around the time that grassroots football ends, and runs through to mid-September just as the grassroots football season kicks off. While the Football Association (FA) enforces a break on friendlies throughout June (though not enforced in 2021 because of the pandemic), summer tournaments are still permitted.
With football teams arranging friendly matches after the regular season finishes up until the end of May and as soon as the break is over in July, it leaves little room in the calendar for those who wish to participate in cricket as well as football. Players are constantly faced with date clashes for both training and fixtures between the two sports and/or left with little time away from sports.
The State of Grassroots Cricket
Within the grassroots cricket community, the feeling is that there is work to be done to bring it to the same standards as football and rugby. The Active People Survey, published in 2016 by Sport England, found that the number of adults that play cricket every week was less than one-tenth of the number that play football as regularly.
In Kent, there has been a steep decline in the number of grassroots cricket clubs. The 1954 copy of the Cricket in Kent Yearbook listed 538 grassroots clubs, with that falling to 303 grassroots clubs as of the publication on the Kent Cricket Club Directory in 2014. A dwindling number of groundsmen in cricket has been seen to be a contributing factor, with groundsmen retiring with few willing to step in as successors.
As well as there being a lack of new blood taking over from retiring groundsmen, cricket is struggling to compete with the finances on offer in football and rugby, with groundsmen gravitating towards higher finances. Fewer groundsmen mean fewer pitches which mean fewer opportunities.
Cricket pitches are also being lost because of the expense required to maintain them, which has resulted in increased costs for players to make up the shortfall. The reality is that many families simply have not got the funds to facilitate children playing both football and cricket and that is even before the expense of equipment is considered.
Desire to Move/Extend the Football Season
At grassroots level in the UK, the football season begins as the kids go back to school in September and usually ends by the end of April with some allowance for final league and cup games in May if necessary. Because of a large number of postponements that come about every year in December and January, owing to winter weather, many have called for the end of the season to be pushed back to allow for more time to rearrange fixtures.
In 2018, a report released by the Climate Coalition found that the average club at grassroots level were losing five weeks of football every year and that more than a third of clubs were losing between two and three months. Waterlogged and frozen pitches account for the majority of those postponements and aside from clubs affording all-weather 3G/4G pitches, there is little other option than to rearrange the fixture at a later date.
With leagues setting a concrete deadline for matches to be completed to account for promotion and relegations, clubs are often left with a congested fixture list at the tail end of the season. Extending the season by a month would, in theory, allow for extra flexibility for clubs and leagues to rearrange fixtures.
The FA say that improving facilities, rather than extending the length of the season, is the key to battling against postponed fixtures in the winter.
An FA spokesperson is quoted as saying on grassrootspost.uk: “We are always considering options to improve the football experience – however, changing the season is a complex topic and there is a need to consider conflicts with other sports, in addition to alignment with school holidays, facility availability and alignment with the professional game.
“The more immediate challenge for us to address is investment in facilities where we know there is more work to be done.
“That’s why we’ve identified facilities and enhanced access to good-quality pitches across grassroots football, specifically in our four-year grassroots strategy, and have set ourselves an ambitious target as we know that 2/3 are below the expected standard.
“By 2024 we want to see 5,000 good-quality pitches added to the current number. With the Football Foundation, we will prioritise the areas and communities where these new pitches are most needed. We want to make the playing experience enjoyable for everyone that plays the game and improving the playing surfaces is fundamental to that aspiration.”
“I Know Now that Football is Almost 12 Months of the Year”
As any parent will know all too well, ensuring that their children attend matches and training comes down to them. That means that as well as the child’s calendar allowing for both football and cricket so, too, must that of the parent which can be difficult to manage.
It is something that Melanie Clipston has found since her son, Red Huggett, started playing football for Stamford AFC Young Daniels Under-13s this season having already been involved in cricket since primary school.
Melanie told Fen Regis Trophies: “Red was a natural at cricket at primary school and played in some county Kwik Cricket matches too; Uffington Primary has close links with their cricket club so that also was very encouraging for all the kids to then join the club.
“Red signed up to Stamford Cricket Club a year before he became interested in football and, because of his asthma, I always felt it was a less ‘sprinting’ type of sport and probably better for Red.
“When he asked to join Stamford football, I did think we could juggle the two, but I know now that football is almost 12 months of the year.”
Though Melanie has found that having her son part of a football team has been more time-consuming than she initially thought, she says they will just have to “juggle it through” during the cricket season.
“The cricket squad is quite big so Red is not always selected,” said Melanie. “We give his availability and then the team is sent out a few days before the match – I think he equally loves both sports so we will just have to juggle it through to September, which is when it usually comes to an end.”
Melanie and Red certainly won’t be the only parent and child juggling commitments this summer, with football teams active in friendlies and tournaments while the cricket season is ongoing.
