2012/2013 – End of Season Report

By Johnnie Walker, Chairman of the Hackney & Leyton Football League

This is somewhat a delayed end of season comment, mainly because for the Management Committee the season never seems to end. It seems as though that ever since the last set of fixtures were played back in the middle of June, we have been tying up details that still hang over from last season. We did expect to have matters sorted out at the League’s AGM Part One, but that was just wishful thinking.

The main problems as per usual are down to certain clubs finances being not cleared and up to date, and this annual event has poor Alec tearing his hair out in trying to balance the year’s books.

I think the League and the member clubs owe Alec a massive vote of thanks for all his hard work and patience, and this applies also to Ted, Jermaine, Macca and Alan, also not forgetting Dino for the hard work puts in for our website.

As in the last few years the work put in by all the committee has almost trebled because of the horrible mess created by the London Olympics, and in particular the absolute disgraceful damage perpetrated by the Radio One/ Hackney Weekend concert which left 23 Pitches badly damaged, in fact many of those damaged pitches remained out of use for the whole season.

As usual our parent body, the Football Association, have been absolutely spineless in their dealings with the criminal organisations that have sent grass roots football back to the dark ages. Yes they put funding towards the so called refurbishing of the Marshes, but they approved the plans of the New facilities, but anyone with a brain can see that only 26 changing rooms is totally inadequate to cater for so many pitches, and when, eventually the East Marsh is returned, that will mean another 22 tams will have to crowd into the Hackney Marsh Centre and make matters even worse.

Staggered Kick off times is the FA’s idea of a solution. They should send someone down one Sunday morning to witness the chaos that exists already. They really do not have a clue about grassroots football. What a sad bunch they are!!

Once again I have to thank all the staff at the Marshes for all their help, and all our clubs for their patience and understandingof the circumstances that we’ve been lumbered with. Just try to remember that the staff has done more than their remit in order to help us to organise football in spite of pitch shortage and inadequate dressing rooms.

I was particularly proud of our league over the whole season, the standard of football shows a steady improvement, as does sportsmanship and friendship. There are the occasional blips, but I have seen and been involved in much worse during my time in football as a player, Club Manager, and League administrator.

My congratulations go to all the winners and runners-up of the Divisions and also the cups, but never forget the also-rans who are the backbone of any league and have competed just as hard as the trophy winners but have to wait another year to get a chance of honours. Even so, other congratulations go out to the clubs that have won sportsmanship awards, they can also be proud of this achievement.

Club secretaries and team managers have a hard task these days in running a team; this is why we have bent over backwards by trying to help our clubs survive. We have cut our administrative fines to a bare minimum, unlike the FA who thinks nothing of piling on the agony with extra beaurocracy and financial penalties if clubs don’t keep up with their demands. Woe betides a team that doesn’t cough up their fines on time, they are liable to find their fine doubled or even trebled. I don’t see the point of increasing a fine, if it’s hard enough to pay in the first place, how does increasing it help?

More problems created by the FA will affect us this coming season, those faceless bigwigs at the FA have deemed it necessary for all clubs to sign up to a personal accident insurance policy before they grant a club their affiliation. I always imagined that taking out an insurance policy was an individual’s choice, but according to the FA and from the start of this coming season, personal choice is not an option. This is just another example of the FA’s interference into our football; they think they know what’s best for us, the fact that people like me who have been playing and administrating football for nearly seventy years counts for nothing.

Also they have, for the third year running changed the Standard code of rules. So once again they have created more work for us before we can print our handbook. Our rules will now contain more gobbledegookthan ever before, most of it pure nonsense and written up like a law book. I suppose some of it is necessary in these days of litigation, but what a load of old cobblers. If I could show you the original set of rules that existed when I got my first handbook when playing in the London Sunday League, it was just four or five pages, and this was a league that had eight divisions and was run perfectly. How times have changed.

I seem to have spent my article rubbishing the FA, well quite frankly they deserve it for neglecting grass roots football, and by that I mean park football, not the Conference. If the real roots are ignored, where will our kids play and where will the organised leagues be if the rot continues.

However, we made it work last year in spite of the FA and their Olympic buddies, and this was by doubling our efforts. It looks as though we will be doing more of the same this coming season but thanks to all who contributed to our fine league throughout the past season.