The reasons for our choice for next season

The decision over which league to play in was not an easy one.

The final results of the poll were 7 for Witney, 7 for Oxford, 2 no preference, and 1 no vote. The split between A and B team was 4-3 in favour of Witney by the A team, and 4-3 in favour of Oxford by the B team. Each team had one no preference. The manager and coaches were split 2-2.

For me there was a single guiding principle that I was trying to adhere to, and that was: which league would most children play the most football at a level which they found most comfortable and enjoyable. This tended to make me prefer the Witney league as I felt that any natural reduction in the squad size would allow everyone to play every week, and that B team players would be pitched against players of equally ability rather than struggling against A team players.

I appreciate that there are some B team players who would like to play in a game that “counts”, but this seems to me that it should be secondary to actually playing football.

The postponed match against Banbury United however was sufficient for me to be swayed. If you noticed, Banbury United turned up with 9/10 players. Their first team would play our first team, and then their second team would be mainly first team players again. While our A team might do well against their first team, I imagine that our B team would struggle very badly. After a bit of research it turns out that a lot of “leading” clubs, run elite teams in this way, and have second “Stars” or “Colts” squads.

If we were to play in the A league in the Witney league next season, we would run into a number of these types of teams, and the B team might struggle badly. So the coaches and I looked at how we would handle the squad in the Oxford mail league.

My major reservation to the Oxford league was not the 2 teams counting to the result (which I think is an advantage), but that in order to have two teams of seven every week we would have to expand the squad to 18-20 children, and that those less able players would only be able to play every other week.

However we have decided to keep the squad size at 17, and to try and get by. This does mean that if more than 3 people don’t turn up, or are away, we will be playing a person short and means we will look to have a high level of commitment from the squad members.

The benefit of keeping the squad at this size will mean the approximate amount of football for all members of the squad remains the same as this year, at around a minimum of 2/3rds of games outfield. The current A team players will play most weeks – this is no different to this season.

One major difference will be substitutes. In the Witney league we didn’t need substitutes because if someone didn’t turn up, then somebody could just play in both games. This is not allowed in the Oxford mail league as both teams (including the subs) must be nominated before the start of play, and you cannot play in both games. Therefore in a perfect world we would turn up with 2 substitutes. This is difficult for the child who is chosen as substitute. We could run a policy of a substitute always getting half a game, but this carries the implications (if you are only getting to play 2 out of every 3 matches) that the child will play 1 full match and 2 half matches over a three week period. This doesn’t sound very attractive to me, and I would like some feedback from parents about what they think: is it better over a 3 week period to have 2 full games and one token 5 minutes, or 1 full game and 2 halves?

To some extent whether this turns out to be a real problem depends on how many people turn up each week, and we can see how it pans out. But I am tempted by the idea of having substitutes “on call”. We rarely, if ever, have to substitute somebody because of injury. Substitutes are really only necessary if someone doesn’t show up. We could run a system by which if nobody reports in unexpectedly ill by 9am on a Saturday, then the substitutes can take the weekend off (if they want to). If they do still want to turn up they should expect to only get a token 5 minutes unless we are winning easily by half time of the second match, in which case theyt might get a half instead of one of the regular A team players.

It is also worth saying a thing or two about goalkeepers. We have one regular goalkeeper (Adam), and some others who have shown interest. It is currently our expectation to play Adam in goal in the second game each week. If we are winning easily or we are playing a team we expect to beat, we will play Adam outfield with one of the regular A team players in goal.

For the other goalkeeper we will rotate it among 3 players. It is not yet clear to me who we will be asking to keep goal, but those asked to do it will play 1 week in goal, and 2 weeks outfield. They will not in general ever be a substitute.

For those of you of a mathematical persuasion, you will have noted that we have 5 A team players, playing most weeks, and then 4 people sharing the goalkeeping or playing outfield. This means that 7 outfield places and the 2 goalkeepers will be taken up each week by 9 players. Ergo, there are 5 outfield places to be shared among the eight remaining players. This is only a little bit lower than the 2/3rds figure I quoted above. However it is my expectation that we will have situations where we will play the equivalent of Witney Vikings and we can “rest” some of our star players. We will also look for opportunities to sub on people instead of the A team players if we are winning comfortably.