Reporting Youth Team Results

A week ago BN was taken to task for reporting that the Hereford United under 18 team had lost their last game.

Whilst our report was factual, some said it did little to raise the confidence of the team to see their result used as a headline. We decided to take down the article.

Yesterday, the Official Site reported the results of the Hereford United under 12, under 14 and under 16 teams, all of whom had won their games. However, for whatever reason, they did not publish the result of the under 18 team who lost their game at Oxford.

Interestingly the subject of whether to report the result of junior teams has been raised in Shropshire.

According to the Daily Mail, 'officials running Telford Junior League have refused to record heavy losses - to spare young players from embarrassment.
As a result, the scores are limited to 1-0 victories and 0-0 or 1-1 draws across 20 divisions in age groups from the under-10s through to under-16s.'

The reporting of results appears to have split the Daily Mail readership.

Here's two opposing views:

Firstly: No wonder Britain is laughed at by others ,who on earth thought up this stupid idea, when will the idiots in charge of these games ever learn. All these young footballers to play in padded clothing,must play with a soft type beachball,goal scoring to be forbidden,no tackling,hard hats to be worn. By order of the British Softies Brigade.............When will they ever learn the art of football.


Secondly: I think this is a good move, kids of 10 and 11 should be learning how to play the game not worrying about winning and titles! We wonder why our senior team is lacking that creative spark when you have local managers taking U-12 games seriously. Put the biggest and strongest kid up front and lump it up to him to score goals, whereas a creative player who is still learning to play, trying new skills and passes may give the ball away a lot so he's benched. In Spain the system is different. The young kids don't have a competitive league its about meeting up on a Sunday and playing football, learning the game. Seems to work well for them...................

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