Last week we hosted our sixth Club Update, a bi-monthly online meeting that is open to all club and team officials working in grassroots football.

The aim of the meeting is to discuss key issues affecting grassroots football, identify and share best practices, and discuss a specific club development area of focus during every meeting.

The latest Club Update focused on ‘Embedding Respect’ and highlighted how clubs can help to promote respect and create a positive playing environment for everyone involved.

The main development areas covered in the meeting were:

• Defining respect, discipline, safeguarding and refereeing, as well demonstrating how to report issues in these areas correctly 
• Defining what a good and bad environment looks like and the affects it can have upon players/referees/coaches/spectators
• Outlining a new initiative by SHCFA and local junior leagues to improve behaviour at junior football
• Highlighting that all clubs have a responsibility to manage and police behaviour within their membership, in line with their club rules and codes of conduct to prevent isolated poor conduct from clubs’ members becoming consistent behaviour.
• Recommending that clubs reflect upon their current processes for dealing with incidences of poor conduct – highlighting that this will need to be specific to players/spectators/coaches
• Recommending that clubs ensure that they have a clear policy and process to follow (Club Rules) to deal with incidents of poor behaviour or conduct.
• Recommending that clubs have a clear internal reporting process to try and ensure that the club are made aware of any incidences of poor conduct (even ones that are not reported via respect scores or by the referee).

You can watch a recording of last week’s meeting below:

The slide deck from the meeting is also available to download here

If you or your club would like to explore good practices around embedding respect, or you would like support on improving your processes or reporting systems, then please contact our Club Support Officer Tom Measham by emailing: Tom.Measham@sheffieldFA.com

The next Update will be in November and will focus on England Football Club Accreditation. We will announce further details in due course.