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2005-06
Season - League Secretary's Report
by
John Monk (Hon. Secretary) Four years after the initial merger which created the Amateur Football Combination from the Southern Olympian League and the Old Boys League, we find ourselves in the throes of another merger. Although not on the same scale as the original, the merger with the London Financial Football Association has nevertheless involved many hours of meetings, negotiations and communications by Officers from both competitions. The LFFA comprises Clubs associated with the finance and insurance sectors many of which are household names. The competition has suffered a steady decline in Club numbers due to mergers and acquisitions in the financial industry over recent years which now threatens their viability as an independent competition. The AFC offers a natural haven for the LFFA Clubs because we cater for a wide range of ability and can offer competitive football at all levels played in a spirit akin to the LFFA. I am pleased to say that there has been overwhelming support amongst AFC Clubs for the merger and clearly our Clubs look forward to welcoming new competitors in a merged competition. Designing a new constitution incorporating up to 15 new Clubs and 22 new teams, mostly based in South East London, has presented the greatest challenge. Bob Coates and members of the Constitution Committee have consulted extensively amongst our Clubs and come up with a proposal which realigns the West region and the South region. Their proposal will accommodate the LFFA Clubs at levels which should suit their team strengths. A reshuffle was becoming increasingly necessary regardless of the merger because growth in the South and contraction in the West was making the constitution increasingly lop sided as well as increasing concerns from clubs about the breadth of the South region. It is fair to say that one or two Clubs feel disadvantaged by the proposal. I believe the most positive way forward is to accept the current proposal as it stands which will support the merged competition over the next season. The constitution will be subject to review in the light of experience over the 06-07 season at next year’s AGM. There were very few postponements due to the weather for a second successive season. It might be tempting fate to say this but the lack of interruptions to scheduled games was to the disadvantage of some teams who completed their league programmes in March or even earlier. This potentially deprived them of competitive football during March and April and their Clubs income from match subs and over their bars. The AFC’s response was to launch a new idea – a ‘Spring Cup’ competition which is the brainchild of Danny McConnell. The Spring cups have been a great success in filling the gap with 54 sides entering seven separate spring cup competitions. The success of the cups is due to the amount of work put in by Danny and also by Bob Coates and members of the Fixtures Committee including the Divisional Match Secretaries. I should also mention the AFA who were a great help by sanctioning the cup competition at short notice. We won’t be able to run Spring Cups every season but they have proved a popular solution to this seasons early finishes and they are something I am sure we will want to run in future seasons whenever possible. Despite the good Winter weather and the demand for extra matches our top side, Old Meadonians, accumulated a backlog of league matches at the end of the season. This fixture congestion was mostly a product of their Club’s success in Cup competitions. They won the AFA Middlesex / Essex Senior Cup and the London Old Boys Cup and reached the semi-final of the AFA Senior Cup (which they won last year). On 1st April they had only completed ten league games and were in mid table with 18 points compared with the 36 points held at that time by Old Hamptonians. However, by Saturday 20th May Meads had completed their league matches and, for the fourth successive year, won the Premier Division by a margin of three points ahead of Hamptonians who you could forgive for thinking they had been mugged at the death. It is not ideal when key matches to decide championship and relegation issues are played in mid May but this should not be allowed to detract from Meadonians achievements in this and recent seasons which are truly remarkable.
Our incoming President is Alan Meyer. Alan is an Old Camdenian who has contributed many years of dedicated service to the Old Boys’ League and the AFC. He is very much in the engine room of the competition, quiet and unassuming, one of the people without whose efforts we would struggle to run effectively. I particularly admire the high standards of administration which Alan has maintained because he does this without the help of any IT systems. I wish him all the best on behalf of the AFC in his time as President. Continuing with the theme of administration, this season for the first time we have used paid support to carry out some routine administrative tasks such as collating results, league tables, CRS forms and referees results cards and marks and to develop and improve some of our record keeping systems. In doing so we have been able to keep costs under control to the extent that we expect Club subscriptions to remain unchanged for a fifth season. We have also looked at the way we fix fines for administrative failures. Clubs sometimes ask why they have been fined for what seem like trivial oversights such as failing to submit the weekly comprehensive results sheet on time. Quite simply the fines are very often the AFC’s way of encouraging Clubs to get simple admin tasks right. One late form might seem trivial but there will be well over 100 Clubs in the AFC next season and we simply can’t afford to let administrative standards slip because that would make running the competition enormously difficult. We don’t have the administrative capacity to chase routine information so we have to insist that Clubs get these things right. There are other reasons for fining too – such as in cases of serious breaches of the competition rules (packing a team for example). There is a kind of poetic justice here as well because the fines paid by Clubs whose admin is poor help keep the AFC subscriptions down for the Clubs whose admin is good. We are taking references to the amounts of fines out of the AFC rules to give us flexibility in adjusting fine levels season by season without the need for rule changes. In their place we will publish from time to time a table showing the levels of fines to be imposed. The table will appear on the AFC website and a copy is also attached to this report as an Appendix. One area in which the AFC needs to improve is in the organisation of Representative Team football. Over the past few seasons the Rep Team has come to rely on just a handful of Clubs to provide players. Some fixtures have had to be cancelled or re-arranged at the last minute and the rep team has had to be bailed out more than once by the efforts of a few individuals otherwise the list would be longer. Rep team football has been a fine tradition of the SOL and the OBFL but without the support of the Clubs in putting players forward coupled with good administration and planning of fixtures by league Officers it may not remain viable. Rory Vermeulen has offered to stand as Rep Team Committee Chairman for 06/07 and I hope that he will receive support from a wider range of Clubs in the form of a good supply of Rep Team players. The Executive Committee of the AFC includes a good number of Club representatives who help to ensure that we remain firmly focussed on providing the sort of football in which our Clubs want to participate. These links with our member Clubs are essential to enable us to receive feedback on how we are doing in administering the competition and how we should be looking to develop into the future. This season we launched a series of three mid season regional meetings. The aim of the meetings was to provide opportunities for Club Officers, players, referees and League Officers to get together in an informal atmosphere to discuss issues of interest and importance to the Amateur Football Combination and its continued development. Although it has to be said that levels of attendance at the meetings by Clubs were disappointing, there were useful discussions and some positive messages including further support for the merger with the LFFA and the regionalisation changes. Among other things there was interest in youth football (a possible future direction for development) and there was strong support for maintaining levels of post match hospitality as a key feature of the AFC. There was also very strong support for continued application of AFC rules on team strength, team selection and movement of players between sides. The message here was ‘carry on taking strong action where these rules are breached’. Overall the discussions were wide ranging with many points of interest coming from the floor which have provided the AFC’s Development Committee with food for thought. Alongside his many other AFC roles Danny McConnell is the AFC’s Child Protection Officer. In this role he encourages every member Club to have a Child Protection Officer who has attended the 3 hour FA Child Protection Workshop and obtained CRB clearance. Danny has placed a wealth of information about Child Protection on our website so that Club Officers can understand why this topic is so important to our football. The website also incorporates the AFC’s Child Protection policy statement. The FA has plans in place to put new limits on the age of players taking part in adult football. Consequently the AFC rules are having to be changed so that nobody under 15 on 31st August 2006 can play in AFC matches next season and from season 2007-08 the FA require that all players must be 16 or over to participate in any adult football including the AFC. Changing the date of the annual dinner from Autumn to Spring presented a challenge for the Dinner Committee because they had to organise two events this season. The change to an end of season date proved popular and future dinners will continue to be similarly timed. Eddy Murphy is stepping down as Dinner Committee Chairman having fulfilled that role for some years and thanks to him for the efforts he has put in. So we have come to the end of a particularly busy season for league and Club officers and I would like to thank everyone who has played a part in the continued success of the AFC. John Monk (Honorary Secretary) - June 2006
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Our President, Rob Gibbs, will be stepping down at this year’s AGM after two
years in the role.