The FA Grassroots Strategy 2024-28

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The FA badly missed some of its grassroots targets set back in 2021, including the 'positive football environment score' which has actually fallen from 70% to 62%, against a target of 76%. It says 'We will double down on our efforts to drive progress in these areas over the next strategy cycle.'

Any real sense of ambition in behaviour targets appears to have been abandoned in the new strategy. The targets are now merely:

• An improvement in the percentages of games where behaviour is ‘good’ or better.
• Fewer teams breaching the behaviour penalty point threshold.

We can see under Priority 4 for how they intend to improve the behaviour situation, though nothing in there really does it for me.

 

[RustyRef]

There had to be some kind of change, the old target system was all over the place and pretty much impossible to achieve. London is arguably the most diverse city in the world, but the referee targets required a bigger percentage of people from ethnic minorities than the overall percentage in the population.

Time will tell I guess. They are coming down harder on players and clubs that misbehave, so that might help with priority 4. Referees also have to play their part, I've said this before but it is incredibly common for RefsSecs to get emails saying how disgraceful player and club behaviour was, but they then open the match report and there wasn't a single card issued, that doesn't help anyone. In fairness, I think I am probably preaching to the converted in terms of members of this forum, but there are a lot of referees that just go out to take the money and the cards never leave their pockets, and even when they do they don't get reported.

 

[DavidObs]

There had to be some kind of change, the old target system was all over the place and pretty much impossible to achieve. London is arguably the most diverse city in the world, but the referee targets required a bigger percentage of people from ethnic minorities than the overall percentage in the population.

Time will tell I guess. They are coming down harder on players and clubs that misbehave, so that might help with priority 4. Referees also have to play their part, I've said this before but it is incredibly common for RefsSecs to get emails saying how disgraceful player and club behaviour was, but they then open the match report and there wasn't a single card issued, that doesn't help anyone. In fairness, I think I am probably preaching to the converted in terms of members of this forum, but there are a lot of referees that just go out to take the money and the cards never leave their pockets, and even when they do they don't get reported.

That’s a real sad part to hear about with your last para.