It’s with genuine sadness that River Juniors will not continue with games or training until advised otherwise by the Football Association due to the ongoing COVID-19 situation.
We are THE club that always get’s games on when the weather disrupts pitches, we provide football all week, every week but some things are more important than football and for that reason we respect the guidance and rules of the Football Association.
http://www.thefa.com/news/2020/mar/16/grassroots-football-suspended-160320
Whilst I appreciate the frustration you may have that your child’s main hobby and form of exercise is being suspended this is a much bigger issue for the club than there being no games or training. We would ask for your patience during this very difficult period for everyone.
You will see other teams, clubs and coaching set ups continuing and may ask why we have stopped. Any FA affiliated clubs continuing to arrange and playing games or training are voiding all their insurance and risk being banned from football in the future. If any coaching providers are continuing with sessions then they aren’t affiliated to the FA, the football governing body, so you would have to ask are they insured? Are they CRB checked? Who is the welfare officer? Who do they answer to? We would expect no managers to set their own games up with their teams, if this happens we will have no option but to remove you from the club.
Under the circumstances we request that payments, if up to date, are suspended until further notice. If you have any outstanding payments for either monthly fees or registration payments please bring these up to date, if you aren’t in a position to do so please advise. We have instances already of people advising they will continue their direct debit to help the club maintain income to cover outgoing costs and for this we are eternally grateful.
As a club we work differently to other clubs, most clubs are solely volunteer led but due to the size of River Juniors and the historic way that the club began we have people who are paid. All your coaches that take sessions midweek or younger weekend sessions, be it the Mini River up to Under 14’s, are qualified paid coaches. The club runs all the admin (leagues/venues/facilities/FA etc), of which there is a lot, and organises and delivers all coaching, FA Level 1 & 2 (Under 8 and below) and FA Level 2 & UEFA B (Under 9 and above). If we didn’t organise all this we wouldn’t get the volunteer managers on a match day, therefore no teams.
Yesterday we had had to advise 17 of the clubs part time coaches that there is no coaching for them until we are advised otherwise. We would like to thank those people who have contacted us direct with their concerns about the impact on our coaches.
We are hopeful that our positive relationship with facilities providers means that when the suspension is lifted the bookings will all remain but there is no absolute guarantee of that. There may be situations that we are expected to continue payment in order to keep our bookings therefore payments being brought up to date will be appreciated. If we can’t afford to do this we aren’t sure of what may happen.
Whilst sessions and games are off we would encourage everyone to be as proactive as possible to get their children exercising and socialising. We will be meeting to discuss organising some home training ideas with and without a ball, maybe a competition or possibly online FIFA tournaments for those who play.
We are also looking for assistance with a support group within the club at this difficult time, we are a huge club with the potential to help each other a lot. It may be that a parent can’t get baby milk (which we’ve read a lot of on social media due to panic buying) and we put a message out if anyone knows anywhere that has this could they advise. It could be that people are in self isolation and we need to help them with shopping or getting prescriptions to them.
Whatever it may be at this time it would be fantastic if we could support each other.
We will update as much as we can during the suspension period and we hope that everyone at the club and their wider family stay safe and healthy. We hope that you also don’t feel the ‘knock on’ impact of the virus in terms of your own working situations and family situations.