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Football Australia’s success in rebuilding their grassroots game post-COVID has resulted in the renewal of their AFC Grassroots Charter Gold Membership.
In endorsing the football body, the AFC Grassroots Panel stated that Football Australia “has been innovative and has understood the need for increased human and financial funding to ‘bounce back’”, pointing out that their approach and actions could serve as “best practices” for other AFC Member Associations (MAs).
Apart from significant changes to its organisational structure and employing grassroots managers and club developers across the country, the Panel also acknowledged Football Australia’s extensive data collection drive, promotional activities, government-funded club development programmes and their well-focused community initiatives.
Among others, Football Australia saw marked improvement in several key departments in 2021, including a 20% increase in total grassroots participation from 2020. This included a 108% rise in specific diversity and inclusion programmes, a 64% growth in school football and a 39% increase in futsal participation. Women and girls’ participation in outdoor, futsal and social events also shot up by 21% in 2021.
In January 2022, Sport Australia funded the re-implementation of the National Club Development Program (NCDP) to encourage clubs to complete a series of online ‘Health Check’ modules. The exercise screens a club’s capacity and capability for delivery in areas such as governance, participation programmes and Human Resources & volunteers.
The data captured within the NCDP will be used to identify gaps, trends and areas of support that Football Australia needs to provide local clubs to increase participation, quality of service, social inclusion and gender equity plus player retention and satisfaction.
Two national community programmes – MiniRoos Kick-Off and Sporting Schools are also witnessing sustained growth. The Sporting Schools initiative currently delivers over 1,800 football sessions to Australian schools each term while MiniRoos Kick-Off experienced an 18% increase in participation since the pandemic.
The AFC Grassroots Charter is a development tool that assists MAs to increase their grassroots programme quality. It targets 20 performance categories including competitions, planning, promotional activities and partnerships.
