Any Full-Time Football Staff in your club?

How many full-time staff does your junior club have?

Struggling for volunteers? Does the model for your club work? Is it going to be sustainable in the future?

Ever noticed how the Canberra football communiy, all 20,000 players, has no place in our community.
One Club in Australia has eighty full-time staff, so why does your club have NONE? What are we doing so wrong in Canberra, and maybe elsewhere across the country. And will your club be in the same boat in the next 10 years. Probably! Read on.

About Vikings Futsal
Vikings Futsal began in 1992, when a meeting of the Logan City Futsal Club decided to call their national league team the Logan City Vikings. Today Vikings are at the forefront of futsal management and development. Vikings operate around 200 clubs, with another 30 affiliated across Australasia, have 80 full-time and 150 part-time staff. It also has affiliates in Brazil, Chile, USA, China, UK and the Philippines. Vikings is a not for profit association. Our mission is to develop futsal as a sport in its own right, not as a form of training for alternative sports.

Few clubs in Canberra, if any, have any support from our licensd clubs, our own grounds or even our own shops. If Sportsman's Warehouse or Rebel sell some gear to our kids and we get a little rebate we think we've done a good deal. Pathetic if that is the best we can do.

Who is driving the business model for football in Canberra, or for our clubs. I see no evidence.

Resourcing is the single biggest issue facing football in Canberra.

As your kids go off to play futsal at the local Netball Centre or some private centre to pour money into those other sports over summer, take a look around you. At the kids who are playing, and the benefits they are getting. None! Not one long-term benefit to our kids from the money they are spending.

Turn up play your game and that's it. You can't even get a few minutes to train before the game as we've only paid for courts from 5-10pm and the courts must remain empty until 5pm. How much do we pay?

One club with over 1500 players approached a local licenced club in their area. "We don't support soccer."

When will the dingbats from Ainslie Footy Club, Wests Rugby or Raiders HQ and the like realise that we have all the kids and by joining with the community, the soccer community which is the Canberra community in essence, they not only get to contribute to the health and welfare of the community they could actually entice/offer special deals to get some kids to play their games...and by god they need them don't they!

Hey their green ovals could even get used occasionally but that's another story.

Why does football in Canberra despite having all the kids, hardly have any infrastructure worthy of it's name and not a single bus to collect kids from High School for training (AFL) Development Officers who spend considerable times in school from a Club (Wests Rugby), clubs providing free Coaching and Educational seminars, free meals for their 14-18 years olds (Raiders).

It's our own fault. Don't blame those in other clubs or codes. We have enough talent on our sidelines with Professional and Business nous, but it seemingly isn't being tapped. Our kids deserve better, our city deserves better.

You can only do this stuff if you have money. Football has none bar the odd handout from the ACT Government. Big deal!

And the Raiders and Brumbies get $1 million per year, Canberra football should get the same. The kids would benefit, we'd use it wisely and in time when an A-League team comes in the A-League would benefit, from players ready to go and infrastructure already set-up to assist an A-League club in the long-term.

Who is lobbying for us to get the same monies as League and Union?

How many balls are sold across Canberra every year? Does anyone make any money from it?

Rebel and various Sports Shops must make hundreds of thousands per years from football. Boots and footwear, same with socks, shorts you name it there isn't a football club making any real money from it's player purchases. And if they are it's all volunteers (God Bless em) isn't it.

Is anyone planning for our future or is our future a Government handout for TigerTurf every three years, is that the best we can do.

There is money out there, 20,000 kids and their parents must spend an awful lot of money in the community.

We haven't tapped our resources yet, and if we continue as we are we will be the laughing stock of all Australia.

Canberrans pride themselves on being smart people. Time our football community got serious, and worked their talents.

We could hardly do worse could we?