Red tape strangles the life out of the local park game
Amateur players are quitting football and clubs are folding in the face of excessive bureaucracy, writes Charlie Eccleshare
Registering players on the website is about as easy as changing an easyjet flight
It was when the website crashed for the fourth time in an hour that I cracked. Having spent most of the summer trying to make sense of the Football Association’s Whole Game website – a system so complex that the Byzantines might have deemed it a touch intricate – I could take it no longer.
It should have been simple. I was merely trying to register amateur footballers for a Sunday League team. Unfortunately, the FA’S agonisingly slow website and excessive bureaucracy makes doing so about as straightforward as changing an easyjet flight.
Among its many quirks, the website has a habit of revealing only what information you need on a stage-by-stage basis. So, just when you think you have managed to track down all your team-mates’ home addresses, email addresses and photos, there comes the big reveal: Can you confirm you have seen each of their passports, birth certificates or driving licences?
This level of administration is the scourge of amateur footballers across the country, many of whom spend their summer desperately chasing players for information and identification.
In the Islington Midweek Football League, each player must mail two physical passport photos to the registrations secretary, rather than uploading them online. They must also send new photos each year instead of registrations rolling over from the previous season.
And for one player who sent a correctly-sized photo but one printed off from a computer, not a photo booth, he was told in no uncertain terms that this would not do. Why? Because that’s how we have always done it. OK? Good.
You could be forgiven at this point for thinking: oh, woe is you, busy millennials are put out by having to post a letter.
But there is a more serious point here. Adult participation levels in amateur football are plummeting – an Fa-commissioned report three years ago showed that 2,360 grass-roots teams folded from 2010 to 2015, while regular 11-a-side players aged 16 or over had fallen by around 180,000 since 2005.
A big reason for this is the level of hassle involved in running a team and the petty fines that are handed out for all manner of minor offences, such as failure to wear numbered shirts, no captain’s armband and submitting a team-sheet late. And that is not to mention the ban on players committing such sins as wearing base layers or cycling shorts a different colour from the main kit.
In the Camden Sunday League, there is even a rule that teams must pay an administration fee for every player they register once their squad size exceeds 20. So teams are effectively being penalised for involving more people in amateur football. Consternation at rules such as these meant the league’s annual general meeting this month felt like a grouptherapy session.
And we are far from alone. A 2016 University of Kent paper cited league “mismanagement” as one of the main reasons for amateurs giving up. One player interviewed said the way to stop haemorrhaging teams was: ‘‘By cutting the need for major red tape involved in registering and setting up a club every season … and not disrespecting players with constant fines and minimum ways of appeal.”
For all its faults, there are few things as invigorating and enriching as amateur sport. But I should stop now – I will probably get fined for this.