Examination of Witnesses (Questions 100-107)
THE FOOTBALL
ASSOCIATION
27 JUNE 2006
Q100 Chairman: What is wrong with
the system which was advocated by Wendy earlier where you allow
managers to pick people who are best capable of playing and the
managers clearly will not pick people who are weaker or likely
to be injured? Why do you need an artificial barrier saying "No
girls over 11 are allowed to play with boys"?
Ms Simmons: As I say, it was put
there with all good intentions in terms of the safety of young
people. Most countries do have a rule. Ours is one of the lower
ones, some people are similar, but most countries do have a mixed
football rule. We will review it.
Q101 Chairman: Just because everybody
else does it, it does not mean we have to go along with it. There
has to be a good argument for it, does there not?
Ms Simmons: The argument is that
it was put there on the grounds of safety and the biological and
physical differences between males and females, on average, of
secondary school age.
Q102 Mr Hall: If you have got a staff
shortage, surely there is no problem with this? Faye sitting next
to you did not have a problem with this.
Ms White: By 12 I was stopped
and it was my father who decided that. I do think obviously there
is a stage where boys are physically stronger than girls and that
is going to cause them a problem. I think for the girls that maybe
are not the greatest and who cannot compete with the boys, there
needs to be a structure in place so that they can get by and improve
and have a system that they can play in. I was obviously stopped
but I then went on to a girls' team and I stood out because I
benefited from playing with boys. I went quickly into the ladies'
set-up. The good thing is that now girls who are talented are
spotted right the way through to the centres of excellences. We
have got a player at Arsenal who joined at under 10 in our centre
of excellence and worked her way through all the age groups. She
is now playing in our senior team and at the end of last season
she got her first call-up for England, and that is Leanne Sanderson,
so it shows that having a good system is not going to disbenefit
girls. They are going to improve by playing the boys but that
is only for the really good, talented ones who are physically
stronger and who are able to keep up. There are a lot of girls
who are not, so they need to have a system that allows them to
play.
Ms Simmons: The big issue for
me is about a girl being able to access a good-quality, local
girls' system. Faye is right, most of the girls from our research
would like to play in a girls' team. Yes, there are some talented
players, we have got one here today, who could compete on the
boys' teams but we do not know how long she could compete for
before she would want to go into a girls-only system, but the
most important thing for me, whilst we review that rule, is to
continue the work that we are doing going from 80 girls' teams
to 8,000 girls' teams. We have already heard today that one in
three girls wants to play football so there is an awful lot of
potential growth there still and girls' teams that we can set
up. It is critical that we keep the funding going for the grassroots.
The Active Sports programme has been a key factor in driving growth.
For the 47 Emma Wakes around the country that are working with
boys' teams, working with schools, setting up girls' clubs, setting
up school clubs, doing all the work that you have heard a lot
about today, we are continuing our funding into that programme
for the next four years. Sport England have committed for the
next four years as long as this issue over the moratorium by FIFA
is resolved. That is potentially blocking our funding into the
girls' programme. Then the Football Foundation, who are our funding
partner, are committing again to funding but they have decided
to taper the funding down from £10,000 a year to each partnership
to £4,000 per partnership by the end of the three years,
which puts a massive strain on it so we are appealing against
that decision. We need the local infrastructure, the Emma Wakes
of this world, to continue to be invested in to set up that sort
of system that Faye has talked about—local girls' teams,
local girls' leagues and, for the better girls, girls' centres
of excellence.
Q103 Chairman: Emma's funding is
going to run out in January of next year. Is the FA going to make
sure that she continues to promote growth in Essex?
Ms Simmons: That programme is
funded by three partners: the FA, and we have committed to the
next four years of funding; Sport England, who have committed
to the next four years subject to us resolving the issue of the
moratorium on the funding, where if we do not resolve this issue
about WADA and FIFA to do with doping control it could affect
our girls' football funding; then the Football Foundation is the
third partner, and they have decided to reduce their funding levels
going forward over the period which will put a big strain on keeping
the Emmas of this world in post. We have asked the Foundation
to re-look at that because that could put us into a redundancy
situation. Resolving that is absolutely critical to continuing
the growth of the game that has gone on so far.
Q104 Philip Davies: Sorry to labour
the point but on this age 11 thing which I really do not understand
the need for, Faye said her father decided when she was 12 that
it was not suitable for her any more. She and her father did not
need the FA to decide that. They were capable of making that decision
themselves. I do not see why we need the FA to decide for us.
Surely boys develop at different ages to each other so you might
even get a girl who is more physically developed at 11 than a
boy? I do not see why it needs the FA. Surely people can sort
this out for themselves? Would you not agree that at the World
Cup we would have been better off with Wendy Owen than Michael
Owen?
Ms Simmons: I am not sure how
Wendy's knees are, so I am not going to comment on that one! You
could say that about a number of rules and regulations, could
you not? There are rules and regulations around the two-year age
banding. We are looking at the regulation at the moment and we
are moving up the age you can play adult football. It was 14 and
you think, "Why do you need a rule because it works itself
out?" Well, it has not in the women's game. You have still
got 14-year-olds competing with women and therefore we are moving
the age up to 16. The number of 14, 15 and 16-year-old boys playing
men's football is very limited probably because of the structures
that are involved and there are more players and so on. I think
there is a need to have some rules and regulations in the game
to protect young players. We have said that we will look at the
mixed football one. There does not seem to be a consensus whoever
you talk to: should there be a limit; should there not be a limit;
what ages should they be? There does at some point in early secondary
school start to become, on average, a marked difference in the
power, strength and speed of males and females.
Q105 Philip Davies: Can I ask at
the other end, do you have rules about at what age boys and girls,
whether at the same age or a different age, can start playing
competitively?
Ms Simmons: Yes we do. It is the
same ruling.
Q106 Philip Davies: What age is it?
Ms Simmons: It is six years old,
under seven years. But even then, particularly up to under 10
and 11, we try to encourage festival-type football with less focus
on results and big cups and medals, and try and make it more of
a play-type experience.
Q107 Helen Southworth: I have to
say that from all the evidence we have had, and I think the evidence
of our own eyes as well, the involvement of the FA has phenomenally
changed women's football and allowed it to develop incredibly
well from where it was starting. But you will not be surprised
to know that I am equally interested to see your evidence and
one of the things you say about the 11-year-old rule that: ".
. . the FA recognises that the pace of change in the girls' game
means that the technical differences between boys and girls are
continually decreasing. As a result of this, the FA has committed
to undertake a consultation with young players themselves . .
." which you referred to just there. You will not be at all
surprised to know that I am extremely interested in one of my
constituents who is an exceptionally good player, Hannah Dale,
who has demonstrated her stamina today by the fact that she has
been here throughout this evidence session and is going to see
me afterwards to tell me what she thinks about all the various
different issues and what she would like to see happen about them,
but I want to know that girls like Hannah in the very varied scene
that we have been describing earlier for elite girls' football
in terms of the under-investment, very limited opportunities and
very diverse geographical situations. I would like to be able
to see that girls like Hannah can actually develop their potential.
I would also say personally that there was a stage when people
said that women could not be MPs because there were enough toilets
for us and the only time we got enough toilets was when there
were enough women MPs so they had to be there. We have a responsibility
to make sure that we are not doing the same because I do think
that as adults we have a responsibility to make sure we do not
say to girls, "You cannot do this because you are a girl,"
when they quite clearly can and to put artificial barriers in
their way which mean they have to go back to five-a-side football
instead of 11-a-side because there are not enough girls to play
11-a-side.
Ms White: Talking about opportunities
for Hannah in the elite game, I joined the international team
at 16 because there were no younger teams available at that point,
whereas a lot of work and investment has been put into the England
set-up and girls are being scouted at 15 for training camps and
under-17s, to work their way up to under-19s and under-21s. So
that option where I went in to the senior team as my first experience,
girls are getting talent-spotted a lot earlier and have been able
to work through that system a lot more nowadays than was ever
the case back then. I think it is easier, and it has definitely
improved, and there are opportunities for that development to
happen.
Ms Simmons: We now fund 51 licensed
FA centres of excellence for girls across the country and through
recent increased investment many of those centres are now playing
against other centres on a regular basis, many of them on a weekly
basis, so that the best girls in the area are playing against
the best girls, because the Hannahs of this world need to be challenged,
as we talked about earlier. The best way to cater for all those
talented girls, I believe is through the centres of excellence
programme and through the centres of excellence fixtures programme.
Obviously if the Government wants to redirect the £2.5 million
of public monies it has been giving the boys' academies to girls'
centres of excellence, we can put even more than 51 centres of
excellence across the country. That has been a really successful
scheme in terms of improving the quality of young players coming
through the system and giving them the best available competition,
but obviously more resources would help widen that net.
Helen Southworth: I must say as an interim
measure a lot of people are appreciating the pragmatism of the
FA in re-looking at the rules to see if there are ways they can
help young players who perhaps do not have as many opportunities
as they need locally to develop to be able to compete and be stretched
at an early age.
Chairman: Can I thank you both very much
and on behalf of the Committee can I say to Faye good luck for
China next year.
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