Voluntary Sector

Our writers’ competition was set up with a legacy left by contributor David Wangerin, who died in 2012. Now in its fifth year, here is the 2017 winner describing life as a youth coach, after he reluctantly volunteered to help out.

- Jem Stone

Five years ago my son’s under-tens foot-ball team were about to fold. The two previous managers, a couple of football mad teenagers, had decided to give it up. Who could blame them? Not many lads find the time to run 30 training sessions a year with 15 or so boisterous Year 5s on cold, wet Monday nights in winter. Fewer still are willing to get out of bed on Sunday mornings to drive all over Sussex to watch a team play league matches for which the word “drubbing” was invented. And nobody wants to spend hours filling out incomprehensible online forms with stats to avoid the club getting petty fines from the FA. We once had to cough up £20 because I’d listed only eight players on our team sheet when there should have been nine. Thanks, FA.

I used to be a rubbish football dad. When I dropped my lad off at training I sometimes perched on a wall reading the paper, drinking tea out of a flask instead of looking up to watch him play. He once abandoned football altogether for a few months because he was so angry at my lack of interest.

For some reason it had never occurred to me that the confident coach over there articulating the merits of 4-5-1 to gangly 15-year olds, another handing out bags of kit, balls and bibs from his van, and a bloke in a club jacket grumpily hovering up mud in the clubhouse were actually just other dads helping out years after putting themselves forward. Mere volunteers. I think I must have thought there were legions of trained managers and coaches out there kicking their heels just waiting for the call-up.