dibo
Well-Known Member
So here's a thing - cost of football is a big problem, no question. But let's look at it with clear eyes.
He wants to get rid of the state bodies and have FFA and regional organisations. Fine, whatever.
Do that, and our kids' fees come down to about $143 plus match fees - maybe $213 per year. If you eliminate the Association fees too so that they can do absolutely everything without staff, the parents are still paying about $153, or more than local rugby league players are paying.
Realistically, since you'd have no paid staff anywhere between the local park and Oxford St, unless you could get volunteers to do it you'd have nobody:
"In the good old days" we had volunteers doing all of those things (such as they were) but in the good old days we had a much smaller number of competitions for men and boys only, and the older men weren't playing, they were coaching or refereeing or on the committee and the women weren't playing, they were in the canteen or on the committee. Now we're playing far longer so we have far more players to look after but perversely we have far fewer volunteers. The old volunteers are our new customers.
Across the state, there'd be comfortably more than $50 million a year paid out by the 200,000+ players and their parents in registration fees.
Of this, Associations keep probably 20% at most, FNSW keeps maybe 10%. FFA keeps about 7% and the rest is with clubs.
To get a kid's $250 fee down to $125 and be truly competitive with junior rugby league or Aussie rules, we basically need to find $25 million a year in extra funding or efficiencies, find an army of volunteers or do less for our players.
And this is at the easy end of the cost of football scale.
Try the kids paying $1500/yr for their place in a Skills Acquisition Program, or $2400 for National Premier League Youth. Across each SAP, you'd need to find no less than $93,500. Across each NPL Youth program, you're looking at $145,600 to get the current fees down to $125.
Is Charlesworth taking the lead on this and charging no more than $125 for their Central Coast and Western NSW programs? Of course not. I'm not saying he's in the wrong here, I'm just saying that if he tried it he'd be quickly mugged by reality. They'd be looking at dropping well over half a million dollars cover the gap between $125 and their old fees.
Across all of rep football (covering nearly 10,000 players across SAP, NPL Youth, Girls, Regional League...) across FNSW you have to find no less than $10 million to bring fees down to $125.
So to get all players' fees down to $125 football needs to find some $35 million per annum from places other than players' pockets. That's the entire FFA tv deal.
So it's a great line, but the reality of it, the sheer breadth and depth of the task, takes far more than a great line to solve the problem of the cost of football.
So let's look at it another way - what about value?
A kid paying $250 a year. What do they get?
Let's say they play 14 one-hour games with a half hour warmup, have four weeks of preseason and 14 weeks of training for an hour and a half a week; you're up to about 48 hours of structured activity for the grand sum of $250. That's a little over $5 an hour. So it might be twice the hourly cost of rugby league, but are you likely to save $2.50 an hour to have your kid get belted up and down a field for a few hours a week?
Even the NPL youth kid - they're in training for a couple of sessions a week about 38 weeks, they play 22 games (not even counting trials) and they're under the tutelage of paid coaches on better facilities and get a whole bunch of gear as well. $2400 or a bit over $16 an hour.
It's not cheap in the sense that they're big lumps, but it's not expensive per hour either. There's a point to be made in the value of what we get, and we make it far too rarely.
He wants to get rid of the state bodies and have FFA and regional organisations. Fine, whatever.
Do that, and our kids' fees come down to about $143 plus match fees - maybe $213 per year. If you eliminate the Association fees too so that they can do absolutely everything without staff, the parents are still paying about $153, or more than local rugby league players are paying.
Realistically, since you'd have no paid staff anywhere between the local park and Oxford St, unless you could get volunteers to do it you'd have nobody:
- creating and managing draws;
- processing and managing registrations;
- publishing ground closures on wet mornings;
- administering judiciary and suspensions;
- organising gala days, finals days and trophies;
- coordinating statewide comps like State Titles, Champions of Champions and State Cups;
- assisting with insurance claims;
- helping clubs work through the ever-changing mix of regulations (from Fair Trading to the Commissioner for Children and Young People to local councils);
- nobody running coaching courses;
- nobody running referees' courses and training; nada...
"In the good old days" we had volunteers doing all of those things (such as they were) but in the good old days we had a much smaller number of competitions for men and boys only, and the older men weren't playing, they were coaching or refereeing or on the committee and the women weren't playing, they were in the canteen or on the committee. Now we're playing far longer so we have far more players to look after but perversely we have far fewer volunteers. The old volunteers are our new customers.
Across the state, there'd be comfortably more than $50 million a year paid out by the 200,000+ players and their parents in registration fees.
Of this, Associations keep probably 20% at most, FNSW keeps maybe 10%. FFA keeps about 7% and the rest is with clubs.
To get a kid's $250 fee down to $125 and be truly competitive with junior rugby league or Aussie rules, we basically need to find $25 million a year in extra funding or efficiencies, find an army of volunteers or do less for our players.
And this is at the easy end of the cost of football scale.
Try the kids paying $1500/yr for their place in a Skills Acquisition Program, or $2400 for National Premier League Youth. Across each SAP, you'd need to find no less than $93,500. Across each NPL Youth program, you're looking at $145,600 to get the current fees down to $125.
Is Charlesworth taking the lead on this and charging no more than $125 for their Central Coast and Western NSW programs? Of course not. I'm not saying he's in the wrong here, I'm just saying that if he tried it he'd be quickly mugged by reality. They'd be looking at dropping well over half a million dollars cover the gap between $125 and their old fees.
Across all of rep football (covering nearly 10,000 players across SAP, NPL Youth, Girls, Regional League...) across FNSW you have to find no less than $10 million to bring fees down to $125.
So to get all players' fees down to $125 football needs to find some $35 million per annum from places other than players' pockets. That's the entire FFA tv deal.
So it's a great line, but the reality of it, the sheer breadth and depth of the task, takes far more than a great line to solve the problem of the cost of football.
So let's look at it another way - what about value?
A kid paying $250 a year. What do they get?
Let's say they play 14 one-hour games with a half hour warmup, have four weeks of preseason and 14 weeks of training for an hour and a half a week; you're up to about 48 hours of structured activity for the grand sum of $250. That's a little over $5 an hour. So it might be twice the hourly cost of rugby league, but are you likely to save $2.50 an hour to have your kid get belted up and down a field for a few hours a week?
Even the NPL youth kid - they're in training for a couple of sessions a week about 38 weeks, they play 22 games (not even counting trials) and they're under the tutelage of paid coaches on better facilities and get a whole bunch of gear as well. $2400 or a bit over $16 an hour.
It's not cheap in the sense that they're big lumps, but it's not expensive per hour either. There's a point to be made in the value of what we get, and we make it far too rarely.
