I don't think I'll bother coaching again, Joan. I don't get any pleasure out of coaching mediocre players, arrogant as that sounds.
I put so much into it that it's depressing to have to endure the attitudes that exist in so many Youth teams. It's not enough to say "ah well, that's Youth football", I do know some teams full of players who are serious about the game, but the Australian system allows for fun-and-fitness eejits to stay on playing when in the UK they wouldn't be able to find a team. That may sound like a good thing for Australians, but it merely encourages a sophisticated environment for mediocre players (the provision of refs, linesmen, night games under floodlights, changing rooms, showers) when in the UK they'd be organizing their own games, playing for laughs on the rec at weekends - by far the most fitting option for them.
The Australian system is far too structured. Aussies (as Joan is aware) basically line their kids up early on to play a sport of one kind or another, whether it be football, rugby, Aussie Rules, swimming, etc.
To do this they join an actual club, with its own facilities, more often than not, and they are guaranteed to be selected in a team (even Div 6 or something) and enjoy a season of fixtures, with a coach (maybe a parent), officials and a governing body to complain to.
Therefore every kid is guaranteed some sort of official status as a Team Member, and if a parent isn't happy with their little genius's efforts at basketball, they can take them down to the football club and sign them on there - guaranteed a team, shirt, trophy at the end of the season - the lot.
This is all very well, and it encourages a kid to think that team membership is a RIGHT, not an achievement, whether you think that's a good or a bad thing.
However, when it comes to late teens and U18s particularly, you do get some clubs busting a gut to put together a team when really there aren't enough members. They then hit the phones ringing around former members asking if they'd like to come back and put on the boots for another season?
This way they often put out an inadequate side, just to say that slot and that commitment is filled, never mind that the team will get hammered every week.
That's the situation with my son's side this year. They were struggling with results, team morale at a low, players then start missing training. Lack of numbers at training means the attending players feel slighted, their heads go down - ever decreasing spiral of dejectedness. Add to that the fact that I had a four-man clique of saboteurs and dickheads who took great delight in messing around at training, two of whom I subsequently chucked out of the side, and you have a total depression setting in. I was then summonsed to explain why I had ejected the two culprits and told the Director Of Football that on two separate occasions the players left the field (one red-carded, one took exception to being substituted), they started effing and blinding calling me a c--- and saying they no longer wanted to be part of "this sh*t team" I invited them to make good that promise by not coming back.
The club did not back me on my stance, and invited both players back to training "pending a talk with the team coach"(me).
My view was that even inviting them back without discussing the issue with me, shows lack of courtesy, professionalism and good sense.
Hence my resignation. F*cking arseholes.
