Firstly... Sorry, I'm in an argumentative mood.

Secondly... X-Box have recently released "Kinect" which requires the little blighters to get off the sofa and move. So all will be fine.

Thirdly... I'm not questioning the legitimacy of the argument. I'm just suggesting that not everybody can get involved in every campaign everybody suggests is of the utmost importance to us. I've said this once, but it's like the £2 a month charity thing. Everybody can make a case for why they should be the benefactors. People in general don't have the time or inclination to get "up for" or behind every single little thing that everybody suggests they should feel aggrieved by. Seth (wrongly) expected EVERYONE (his words not mine!) to jump on board and start saving sport in schools, and that was the error. He should've really lead with "This affects me, and I feel strongly about this, all I'm asking is that you have a read and see if you feel the same". Not.... "THIS WILL IMPACT EVERYONE!!!!!". Getting told how to feel and what to think instantly puts people's backs up.

I don't think cutting jobs of managers is going to drastically effect this my kid loves sport in and out of school too but I think a larger issue is parenting. I do lots where others seem happy for the tv etc 24 7. There is sporting opportunities out there and some cuts won't make a huge difference at this time when key servicesneed to be delivered. Yes 225 managers in an ideal world would be great but in these days of cuts do we need them all. After all we are talking in this thread of getting kids active not just creating elete atheletes how hard is it to get your kids active.

I was reading about this on Sunday rlIn the online Observerrl and a couple of quoted "FACTS" sprung out of the article.

1. Michael Gove seems to think that we will be pacified with his promise to spend £10mill on a "Schools Olympics" in 2012 while hoping that we've forgotten the headline £162mill that he's just axed, nice one Michael, always include some good news in with your bad news, like making staff redundant but give them the bus fare to the job centre, they feel so much better for it.

Where the sports instructors will be in 2012 for his "Schools Olympics" I'm not sure, maybe they'll still be signing on ?

2. The report that I've linked to has been updated since Sunday because on Sunday it had a paragraph in there stating that one of the reasons that Gove was scrapping the whole SSP was because his "FACTS" stated that only one in five schools were competing against other schools in their funded sports, a figure which I find hard to believe and a figure that could easily be manipulated to produce the statistic that you require - for instance

"How many hours a week do you coach ?"
Answer = ten
"And how many hours do you play competitive sport against another school ?"
Answer = two
Conclusion = only 20% of the expenditure is being used for competitive sport

Its bollax of course, but thats how politicians work.

Duly noted!! Don't even know why I started it all to be honest. I was at work, sh[ii[/it day and all that. I'm the same as you to be honest, sometimes I just can't be ar[is[/ied doing it properly, so I shall leave the grammar police!

P.S. - "resign" (Sorry! Couldn't resist! I've left now... honest!)

there are loads of clubs around for kids outside the schools. in my small town let alone a big city we have two really well run junior football sides from u7 to u19.
there are archery,cricket, trampolining virtually every sport you can think of expect the two rugby codes, and nearby wetherby and sherburn have both codes.
there is no excuse for any child to be unable to find something to do.
the biggest reason we don't win things is the last goverment brought in this 'no competative' policy with no winners and losers. total b'.

also the fact is a lot of clubs have well meaning but untrained parents 'coaching' and i use the word loosely. i reffed an u13 game last week where the visiting manager berated his team yet gave no clear instructions. he was clueless.

seth, i am really sorry about your job loss but this is a time where we are in massive debt and cuts have to be made. i have no sympathy with the students, the majority it seems can afford to take a gap year and spend fortunes going around time drinking yet cannot afford to pay for lessons. boo fkin hoo my heart bleeds.

You cannot expect the schools to give your child the sport they want or enjoy. Parents also need to take resposability to get the children active. to many people ask "what is the government doing for me and my family?"

Take my youngest lad this term he is doing badmington next term it is gymnastics FFS he hates doing both but the school has to be "inclusive" like most boys it is football, rugby and swimming he wants to do. So what do you do? he trains for football and plays on Sundays cost £4.50 a week. swimming training 8 hours per week cost £30 per month. then he plays Rugby with his brother if parents and children want to actively take part with a sport and partake in competition they will and can do it. if a sport is to be competative and have people enjoying it and have competition it needs to survive in the market place . it is known as capatalism. If as a parent you feel the child obesity is high take them out walking up the moors cost £0

Those two quotes may seem to be opposite sides of the argument but in fact its only the parents who are willing to give up their time who make sure that the clubs you mention in the first quote exist.

You also need to factor in the government/sports council/lottery aid given to these clubs to enable them to continue existing in the first place with or without voluntary coaching, the RU club that my brother coaches at spend a lot of money on CRB checks and on coaching courses & awards every year, some of this comes from grants from central government, where will it come from if this source dries up, certainly not from the majority of parents who never show their face from one season to the next and are usually very reluctant to send their child to training with the correct subs.

The English RFU are actually very good at pinpointing grants from all sorts of sources and recommend that each club has a dedicated contact to apply for these, I don't know if it works as well in RL amateur clubs but I've been extremely impressed at the backup that is given from the RFU.

Fact is its not just school sports, cutting funding could affect all other forms of amateur sports too.

I'm not so sure about that. One of our big problems is that there is too much focus on winning at junior levels, which typically means "give it to the big lad" regardless of the sport, and training that concentrates on fitness and tactics. Instead, we should be focusing on skills development at those levels.

you do have a point but in every sport, or even in lessons such as art, maths etc, there is a pecking order. the kids know who is best at what.
in lessons they are divided into sets so they can learn at the pace of there classmates.
in games they are told they are all equal and nobody is better. it's a farce.

upto, i believe,under 11 they only play 6 a side football with no league tables and the emphasis on skill

and why was the policy of playing to win fine up to the last 20 odd years? we have won world cups in football and RL with this policy?
to me it's because kids today have so much more to do. we played sports every waking hour. you must read jimmy greaves autobiography where he describes playing with tennis balls in the street and convinced its where he honed his skills. brazilians play for hours still on the beach and it hasn't done them any harm

seth.. i am sorry you're losing your job, but reading various letters from Baroness Campbell and The Sec of State, the "RING fenced" funding for school sports partnerships is being removed.
The money will still be available to schools but this is where the kids could lose out. If you have a sports minded head teacher then the current sports activities will continue, however if the head is a sports hater then they are liable to reallocate the money to other school items (computers, chairs, etc etc). The government is laying all the decision making on the head teachers.

Forgive me if i have read this wrong

Been a goal keeper on hard concrete certainly taught me to stop been a big wuss. In fact it was my goal keeping that won my form second place out of four in school inter-form championships . Such a shame that the team that finished top had a striker.

I don't think I've ever come across a policy of having to tell everyone they are equal and no one is better.
In fact, the current thinking is that training needs to move away from drills, and more towards mini-games....to tap into that competiveness we all have.
But in doing that, get away from playing lots of matches, which lead to team training being focussed on winning the next match.

Because the rest of the world was equally backwards in their training methods. They moved forwards, whilst we stood still with the methods that once gave us a narrow win in the soccer WC, when it was played at home.

You're right about playing the game though. Hence the move of training away from drills to games. Playing games is fine. It's when you've got a league structure of a ton of matches ahead, training gets shifted to prepping for one game at a time and winning that game.