Clouding the issue
This ongoing project has focused primarily on the convoluted youth football space in Wellington. Today Liam Hyslop asks Capital Football, the federation in charge of football in the region, what it is doing about the problem.
Before we start with what Capital Football has planned for the Wellington youth football space, it’s important to clear up a common misconception about New Zealand football governance.
New Zealand Football are the national body for the sport, but to call them a governing body, along similar lines to New Zealand Rugby or New Zealand Cricket, is wrong.
The funding model in football means each of the seven regional federations govern football in their area, adhering to New Zealand Football’s plans as they see fit.
That’s because the clubs fund the federations. In rugby and cricket, the governing bodies provide about 65 per cent of their funding to their respective provincial unions and major associations. In football, once you remove Sport New Zealand funding, NZF provides about three per cent of the federations’ funding.
As Capital Football chief executive Richard Reid explains, that means the federations are there to act in the best interests of the clubs.
‘‘We’re very aware of what our members’ wants and needs are, whereas rugby and cricket they’re much more reflective of what their national bodies wants and needs are, because they’re the bank, so therefore they control things.
‘‘New Zealand Football can’t really tell us what to do. You always try to find some common ground so you’re not ever fighting with your national body, that would be pretty pointless, but there isn’t an ability of a rugby or a cricket, because of the funding, to instruct you to say ‘you’re doing this because you have to’.’’
This information is important to know when trying to address the complex world of youth football development in Wellington. It’s Capital Football’s job to have oversight of it and ensure an even playing field for all involved.
Reid acknowledges the current situation in Wellington, where players are pulled between clubs, schools and academies, is ‘‘very messy’’.
‘‘It’s a very confusing space if you’re the parent of a talented footballer.’’
The plan to fix this may cause a stir among some people.
‘‘What we are looking at doing – which we have been working on for quite some time, but I put on hold for a variety of reasons – is an accreditation programme for clubs and/or private providers or academy-based entities.
‘‘It’s not onerous and we’ll call a football forum, or academy forum, or whatever we want to call it, for October, there will be a terms of reference going out in the next five or six weeks around what we want to try and discuss.’’
Just what those terms of reference or accreditation system will entail is not yet finalised, but one would imagine the status quo will not be maintained.
Without wanting to pre-empt anything, the accreditation system could involve ensuring players are available for occasional school games and the National Age Group Tournament, which is hosted by Capital Football every December.
Such a system would likely rattle a few academy cages around Wellington, especially at Ole Football Academy where they prohibit their players from any school or federation football.
Reid said there would have to be some level of comprise from every party, including his own.
‘‘For me, life is a compromise – everyone has got to give a little bit. You can’t have some who just simply say ‘I want to be part of everything you do, except I’m not going to agree with anything you say’. That’s just pointless: life doesn’t work that way. So we’re not anti academies being able to do as they wish, when they want to and charge what they want, but we do feel that everybody has got to bend a little bit at the edges to make it a better market and less confusing for everyone.’’
It could lead to a situation where some clubs or academies refuse to enter the accreditation system.
Reid said if that were the case, Capital Football would have only one effective course of action.
‘‘If we go back to the front-end of being a membership-based organisation and if our members say we’re into this and this is the model and a couple say ‘well we don’t’, well we’ve only got one card we can play in that we own the competitions.
‘‘So maybe, and I’m not saying this is going to happen because who knows what will happen, but maybe you put some conditions of entry to competitions around stuff.
‘‘That’s a possibility, but I’m hopeful you’d never have to do that. Hopefully you’d get good sense and people would understand that we’re all part of the football gig that’s going on, how do we best use it to our advantages? We’re not going to have an ‘over my dead body’ approach and I’m hopeful other people don’t.’’
Interpreting those statements with a ‘worst-case scenario’ hat on, if a club or academy were in the minority of not partaking in the accreditation system, then they could be refused entry to Capital Football competitions, including the Central League.
Enforcing that might be problematic given the nature of the relationships between some clubs and academies, but the hope is such measures wouldn’t be needed.
As Reid points out, the moves shouldn’t be seen as against certain clubs or academies. This space is crying out for attention to provide parents, and their kids, some clarity.
The other point Reid was keen to make was Capital Football do not want to be in the talent space of youth development.
‘‘We’re not about talent. That’s not what we do, but you’ll hear things like we want FTC [Federation Talent Centres] for the money. We don’t, I’ll show you the books anytime you want. You can read our annual report, it’s moneyin, money-out, there’s not a profit margin in there, but those things quickly become part of urban myth and they are just that.
‘‘It suits some people’s arguments to have those myths. You always need a bad guy and you always need to be able to say we’re doing it better than them because they don’t know what they’re doing and it’s about the money to them. Well, we don’t accuse anybody of that sort of stuff, but we seem to get picked off, but that’s the nature of official bodies. That’s not limited to football.’’
‘‘Life is a compromise – everyone has got to give a little bit.’’ Richard Reid