Our club is very simply about giving children and adults from the local villages and surrounding area the opportunity to play football irrespective of ability, gender, age, race or religion. They can be guaranteed to be looked after to the highest standard whilst receiving quality coaching from FA qualified coaches. Their safety and wellbeing is always at the top of our agenda followed closely by FUN!
The club was founded in 1926 under the title of Folk House Old Boys and stayed that way until 1982 when the Blidworth Welfare FC name was taken.
The Juniors were formed again in the summer of 2007 with the help of Phil Selby who oversaw the start up and running of the teams as football development officer. He also had a big influence on coach education regarding our managers encouraging us to take FA courses and regularly putting on coaching sessions and drills to improve our staff. We then had a U15s, u10s, two u9s and u8s which was a great start to build upon. Phil then had to concentrate on his own growing business of getting scholarships in the USA for youths that had previously been at pro clubs, which he does to this day successfully.
We currently have around 175 players, 30 coaches and many volunteers who help run our fast growing club on a daily basis. We have a Senior 1st team, Senior reserve team, Senior Sunday team, U19s, u12s, two U11s, two U10s, U9s, U8s and next season three new junior teams. Being a Charter Standard Development Club all our coaches are CRB checked and have completed their Emergency Aid and Safeguarding Children and are a minimum Level 1 through to Level 3.
We are also encouraging our coaches to enrol on the latest FA Age Appropriate Modules that are available. I can recommend through experience that any coach working with kids will thoroughly enjoy and learn a great deal from the experienced FA tutors, be it the Introductory Module or the Module 1. We can’t wait for the Module 2 to be available. It puts a whole new take on the way we coach our kids and makes you look at things from their point of view not an adult! We also have coaches that have completed their Disability Coaching course so we really can cater for anyone wishing to have a go. We have been very successful over the years at releasing junior players to professional clubs such as Forest, Derby, Mansfield Town and more recently my son Jamie to Notts County which is fantastic news for our club. All our staff at Blidworth are very hard working and always go the extra mile to make things run properly which is one of the reasons I came to this club three years ago. We are constantly welcoming new coaches and players to our club which is great for us.
I now have in place a very successful development school linked through Blidworth Welfare FC running at our local Joseph Whitaker Sports School for 5 to 7 year olds. This will guarantee the follow on of fresh young children enjoying football at our club in the future. The feedback from parents is excellent so they obviously thoroughly enjoy coming. Our teams also take part in many local fundraising events annually and this is how we raise our money to keep the teams running.
I took over the Development role last year, and I have attended many FA coaching courses. One of my roles is to continue supporting the education of our coaches. My aim is to take the whole club further forward by achieving the top level of FA Charter Standard Community Club. This would hopefully bring huge benefits to our club and local villages. We have recently been awarded our Development Club status to which we are all very proud to have. I feel we must keep striving to achieve the very highest standards possible however difficult it sometimes seems. We are now building to run girls/ladies teams along with the possibility of a disabled team through help from the County FA in the next two to three years.
One of the ways that the Charter Standard helps is that everyone knows your club will be run quite professionally and hopefully the FA`s four corner model of Long Term Player Development is adhered to. This basically means that the development of the child comes first not the win at all costs attitude where players turn up to play and get two minutes or none at all in the game. This really does happen as I see it at the grassroots level running two of the Blidworth Welfare junior teams myself. We as a club pride ourselves on the belief that children should all get equal opportunities to develop their technique and skills as there is plenty of time when their older to fight for trophies. Our teams play in many leagues across Nottinghamshire including the Central Midlands, Kickstart, Mansfield Youth and YEL to name a few.
More benefits include reduced prices for many football related things including coach education courses. If any help is needed the County FA are always willing to help with the process of Charter Standard Accreditation.
I have to repeat the words of last months feature club Hucknall Warriers FC Chairman, Paul Burley, “we will continue to honour the commitments of the FA's Charter Standard not because we have to but because we believe it is the right thing to do" - SPOT ON PAUL!
To learn more about Blidworth Welfare FC you can visit their website by clicking here!
If you are an FA Charter Standard Club and would like to be considered for this feature then please contact Craig Lee on 0115 9837414 or craig.lee@nottinghamshirefa.com