A blind-eye or band-aid approach won't fix community sport
By Professor Rochelle Eime
Sports organisations can’t continue to take a blind-eye or band-aid approach to community sport because 2022 could be worse than COVID for participation. This will also impact the player development pathways and ultimately the professional games too.
In 2020 and 2021 COVID kept players away from community sport and particular for winter sports. But 2022 looks worse, and participation is unlikely to recover any time soon.
Many local football clubs started the season without being able to field a team or two. After a 2-year hiatus anyone could have predicted that many would walk away, and more than the usual drop-out rates. Our PASI research team from Victoria University and Federation University analyse and report on sport participation in Victoria across major sports, as part of the Sport Participation Research Project, which is funded by Sport and Recreation Victoria and VicHealth. For adolescent boys aged 14-18 across 6 sports normal year-on-year retention is usually 65% but this dropped to only 27-40% in 2020, a loss of over 25,000 boys in Victoria alone.
Many of these haven’t returned and this decline in participation is having a ripple effect, and the wave of damage will take years and significant attention to resolve.
Those clubs that have lost teams in 2022 won’t be able to fill them in 2023. 65-74% of adolescent boys once they drop-out of sport do not return to playing that given sport within a 6-year period.
Very few would be able to just rock-up to a local footy club at age 14 or 15 and get a game. Most simple don’t have the skills, and to play against those who have been playing for 8-9 years or more would be very daunting.
Sport historically uses a pyramid analogy. You need a large participation base of young players, as players drop-out each year, to manage and maintain enough in the system and pathway for sustained competition and development into the professional competitions.
The ripple effect in 2022 is that there are many players and non-playing ‘players’ trying to plug the gaps. This includes more players than before playing two matches and past players like my son getting texts from the coach the night before to find some boots, borrow a guernsey and please join their old team, and to play without training or playing since last season.
It’s hard for him to say no to his old team and footy family, and hard to make that decision given he doesn’t want to get injured and not be able to play the sport he now specialises in. He still enjoys watching his twin brother and mates play each week.
ncreasingly teams are also playing with only 16 a side and limited bench, as others join the increasing player spectators in slings and moonboots as the injuries mount up.
These practices will no doubt lead to more injuries.
It also seems that the skill divide is greater than usual with more matches being decided by over 100 points.
The main motivation to play community sport is to have fun, to be with friends, and for a sense of achievement and to perform or compete. Whilst winning isn’t the main motivation nor the highest factor related to fun and engagement, getting smashed each week or winning so convincingly isn’t fun for anyone, week in and week out.
This week I witnessed a junior 15 Senior team lose by at least 20 goals to 1, and an Interleague 17s match where the opposition didn’t even score a goal. This was the best senior junior-aged players from the whole league.
There is a natural drop-out in sport that occurs in ‘normal’ times but the drop-out due to COVID is unprecedented. These players won’t return, so how will community sport survive and thrive once again?
It will take years to grow the foundation of entry level players to rebuild the lost teams throughout junior age groups. That is if the young children have the ability to kick, mark and handball as their sport specific skills have been hampered throughout the last couple of years. Across all ages, the largest drop-out have been in the early sport adopters 4-9 years which has missed sport, school-based PE, pre-school and other opportunities to play and engage in sport.
Significant research and strategic development is required to fully understand retention and drop-out issues and develop strategic plans on how to get thousands of players into or back into sport. Especially for those who haven’t developed the sport specific skills to actually be able to play the game.
To have fun and continue to play sport you need a certain level of competency and a similar level of competency. Combining kids who can’t kick or handball with those that can and do it well is another recipe for disaster.
For the sake of our children/youth and local sporting communities, we can’t just fob off the issue by simple saying that participation in sport is down because kids these days are just on their Iphones.
It’s a bit like potholes on community roads. Ignoring the issue or repeatedly just sprinkling some bitumen in the hole every couple of months, the band-aid effect, isn’t going to fix the broken road.
Grass-roots sport is bleeding and taking a blind-eye or a band-aid approach is not going to fix the problem. Let’s not wait a couple of more years when the elite talent poor is depleted, and the issue is impacting the elite professional games before taking action.
Grass-roots community sport needs ‘Champions’ to stand-up and take strategic action and support them now. Remember, grass-roots community sport is where it all begins.