Rossvale to get a new junior team

PROPOSAL FOR JUNIOR FOOTBALL CLUB

Background for forming a Junior team

Rossvale FC was formed in 1976, and is now looking at various opportunities for their growth. One area that we are moving into is girls’ football which will allow us to grow substantially from the 31 teams we have at the moment to over 40 within the next five years.  This is a natural progression on the child and youth theme, however the Clubs amateur section is fairly weak with regards to size with only one team, considering the amount of players that are coming through the Club every year. We then had to look at what options are open to us particularly if we are to achieve Community Club status within the Scottish Football Associations Quality Mark, which requires you to have children, youth, girls and adult sections.

We felt that we would like to put a top quality Amateur team in place, and looked at the costs at setting this up. We then looked at the feasibility of setting up a Junior team and the cost implications to taking this forward. It was felt that the Junior option was a bigger draw, and gave players more opportunities for moving on if his proved to be successful.

The Purpose

We are regularly losing 10-15 players a season to Senior teams, and while this is very satisfying, it is having a devastating effect on our teams, with some of them nearly folding on a yearly basis due to the amount of players that are leaving. We then felt that it is an attractive proposition to set up a Junior team for two reasons. First it will give the players who haven’t had the opportunity to go to the Seniors another avenue to get there, as entering the Pro–youth ranks after a certain age is very difficult. The second reason is that players who have played in the Pro-Youths are generally lost to football if they fail to make it, however this will provide an opportunity for them to gain their confidence and try this avenue and hopefully keep them playing.

We intend to bring in players who have played for a reasonable period for the boys club to encourage players to play for our younger age groups, so that there is sustainability to it. It is difficult for young players to break through into the Juniors and Seniors as managers don’t want to risk them, our intention is that we will take a gamble on players with a view to then moving them onto a better standard of Junior or even Senior team. We will certainly in the early days have to remain as an amateur team within the Juniors until we can ascertain if we will have a sufficient following by supporters.

We will also take that view with managers and coaches also, as we would like them to develop also, giving them the opportunity to show what they can do.

Much of this has come from Gordon Smith at the SFA promoting the pyramid system in Scotland to breathe new life into Scottish football. What we are trying to achieve is similar to what they currently have in Holland, and the Scandinavian countries.

What we need

Whilst there will always be players looking for games, we are looking for people to form a committee to put this project together. We will also require some form of finances through sponsorship, as it will have to run on its own merits, after the initial set up costs.

We would like people to give us feedback on this to see if this is a feasible project to achieve, and would like people to get in touch with the Club through this website.