Letter: Masking sports results creates UK of also-rans
Tuesday 11th October 2011, 6:00AM BST.
Letter: The Telford Junior football league has stopped publishing match results for fear of embarrassing the children.
Results are now listed as 1-0 wins or 1-1 draws. This now comes as England’s football team limped to a pathetic 2-2 draw in Montenegro, and England’s rugby team were humbled by a poor French side at the world cup.
Maybe the political correctness of recent years is now bearing fruit in our sports teams.
Surely trying to tell people that they have done well after they have been roundly thrashed does them no good at all. This course of action merely makes them think that second best is good enough, and no more effort is needed.
This could also explain why standards in our schools are also not what they were in years gone by.
We will eventually become a nation of also-rans if this trend is not reversed.
We need winners in positions of authority, not people who think second best is acceptable.
Shaun Sanders
Muxton
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What we need is for young people to develop their skills, technique, and situational awareness and just enjoy playing the game and not worry about results or league tables at such an early age.
This should be carried out in a pressure free environment without parents and ‘coaches’ yelling at the young players to “get it in early”, or “get in the channels”. Once this has been achieved we can look at picking the best young talent (if they chose to play football seriously) and then develop a winning mentality at later age.
When visiting Spain I watched my half – brother grow and develop in this type of stress free environment and we all know what happened to Spain.
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All detrimental to the child . Some of the big business leaders have said they are disappointing by Britain’s labour force from joe blogs laborer, to the graduate .
The reason for this is the new employee knows everything, cant take being questioned , told what to do, cant get up in the morning, and cant turn up on time etc etc.
Hiding something as silly as sports results from them as a child ie “0-5 score ,your a loser today mate” and replacing it with, “it is about taking part not scores” is absolute drivel, it simply ill prepares them for the real world and removes the ability to be able to accept sometimes you will have critics and on occasion you belong on the loser bench.
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I am absolutely for kids doing competitive sports and for them learning to win, lose or draw with good grace.
But, what is utterly detrimental is an Under 10 11-a-side team thrashing another 14-0 and the result being published in the Star, or wherever, for all to see. Such results usually occur because one team is physically bigger and stronger than the other anyway. Kids at this age need shorter, smaller-sided games on smaller pitches, to get more touches of the ball and develop their skills.
Our country produces poor footballers not because there is a lack of competitiveness at the heart of society but because we put the emphasis on all the wrong things from the youngest ages ; on size, strength and who shouts loudest rather than on skill and awareness. That’s why Spain have Xavi and are World champions and we have John Terry and are also-rans.
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“I am absolutely for kids doing competitive sports and for them learning to win, lose or draw with good grace.”
Surely this flows from the behaviours of their role models, the coaches, professional footballers and parents, not reactions to a massive defeat published in the local press?
Our country has traditionally produced poor ‘footballers’ because of expectation and that same poor loser attitude along with an insular view of football. A lack of simple recognition that we’re just not good enough and need to work harder, like perhaps a 14-0 thrashing delivers.
How many times have we apparently been knocked out of tournaments that we would have gone on to win, by ‘those cheating foreigners’ rather than simply beaten by a better quality team?
How many kids from my era were encouraged to watch and learn from the things Maradona did with a football, rather than just call him a cheating *******!? A certain Messi was and it’s done him no harm. I expect he was also taught about the many errors of Maradona’s ways off the field.
If Rooney ever did the ‘hand of er, god?’ equivalent he’d be a national hero. Even now, where’s the public demand to kick him out of the Euro squad altogether. How many parents of kids are condemning him for being a spoilt brat last week or is it just poor old England and UEFA conspiring against us again. We can’t live without him.
Fortunately, to some extent kids today (and their often hypocritical parents) have no choice but to be exposed to watching the technically better (and healthier) overseas players as all of their beloved teams are reliant on them. (I’m not talking about the cheap imports that are perhaps detrimental to the national game, although that primarily rests with the greed of English players/agents.)
The result is that I see lads on parks these days attempting advanced ball skills and moving passes around like they see on MOTD rather than the simple kick and rush that we all grew up with. They are also more aware of their health and fitness than we ever were and so fingers x-d the future is bright.
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Some fair points there, agree with much of what you say, but am not convinced by this :
‘A lack of simple recognition that we’re just not good enough and need to work harder, like perhaps a 14-0 thrashing delivers.’
Can you really apply it to junior football – to Under 10s up? I don’t think so. I don’t think anyone gains at that age from a result like that – not the winners, not the losers, not the good readers of the Shropshire Star. Such a result at that level can usually be put down to either one bunch of players being bigger and stronger or, as Football Coach said elsewhere, to one team having hoovered up all the ‘good’ players. It leaves no motivation to develop yourself.
If kids are, as you say, attempting ball skills, passing etc more than kick and rush, perhaps there is hope yet.
When we stop regarding people whose every second pass goes to the opposition/out of play or who do liitle more than beat their chests and harangue referees (I mean you, Steven Gerrard and John Terry) as world class players, I may start believing our football culture has left behind its over-emphasis on size, strength and loud voices. Until such time, I remain a sceptic.
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If the Telford junior league grouped the teams together of the same standard their wouldn’t be so many one sided games.
Whoveer said size doesn’t make any difference in the really young divisions obviously hasn’t seen many games at these age groups.
Lets make the 14 or 15-0 games a big headline in the paper one set of players would be thriled some of the other team may give up and prefer to stay at home on their x-box, eventually their will be only about 5 or 6 teams left at each level.
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