As the year comes to a close First Team Head Coach Al Tindall shares his thoughts on a 2020 that didn’t quite go to plan and details how the Club is planning to recover in 2021.
We talked about a ‘new era’ for the Club back at the start of the 2019/20 season. It seems a very long time ago but in reality it has only been 18 months. At that time Futsal in England was in the best place it has ever been with a flourishing England National team programme particularly at youth levels, an exciting new National League Competition and for the first time ever an FA Futsal strategy we could all get behind. Futsal was in its best place ever and at the start of a journey to take it to new levels here in England.
We made the decision at that point to join the journey and push on as a Club. We added to our great academy foundation that has been built up over the years. We re-established our men’s team, grew our Club structure adding new committee members and expanded our coaching and academy teams. By the start of 2020 its fair to say the Club was also in the best place it had ever been with record membership levels, sell out events, coverage across the whole county and with teams playing great Futsal and competing in all competitions. It was clear all of the hard work off court was paying off on it.
When we closed the Club in March as a result of the emerging global pandemic we produced our annual report with real pride and I would like to say a massive thank you to each and every member of our club, parents, sponsors and supporters for your contribution in making the club what it is today. It’s something we can all be extremely proud of.
We held out hope that the closure of the club would be a temporary measure but as events unfolded it soon became clear that life would not be returning to normal for a long time.
It’s been a difficult time. It still is. COVID has had a big impact on all aspects of peoples lives. Some will be feeling it more than others, especially at this time of year and I hope that if you are reading this and want to talk about anything then you should know that you can contact myself or any of the coaches here at the Club for a friendly chat. We are through the worst of things so there is a lot of hope for 2021.
For me, I learnt early on in my life that there are things you can control and then there are the things that you can not. I always go back to this mantra when life throws a curve ball and it helps me focus on what needs to be done. It helps strip out a lot of negative emotion from the thought process and ensures efforts aren’t wasted on things I cant influence. With COVID on the scene its been tricky as so much of what is going on in our lives now falls into the uncontrollable category. It wont be this way forever though. In fact we are well through the worst of things and I am pleased to say we are focusing on April 2021 as the time we can seriously look to get back playing Futsal again.
Things may look different when we return. We have been busy behind the scenes building some of the infrastructure that will allow us to expand. Including producing new coaching resources and videos so that we can grow our coaching team and give them the knowledge they need to educate our players. We’ve got a new outdoor training venue which when combined with our indoor venues will allow for more training and competition opportunities for everyone. We’ve worked on the things we can control.
There are always going to be things we cant control though. There has been a change in pace to everyone’s lives, will people have gotten used to a new way of living? will sport be as important to people? Will all of our members return? Will our volunteer army be affected? Will the FAs funding cuts have any impact? Will any of our competitions be affected? We aren’t going to know the answers to any of these questions and ultimately we aren’t going to be able to influence any of this. But with the hard work that is going on behind the scenes we are giving ourselves the best opportunity to pick the Club up from the great place it was in at the start of 2020. I am very confident that we will see the Club prosper once again off and on the court in 2021.
Personally I can not wait to get back to coaching and to see you all again.
I really hope that you all have a fantastic Christmas and a very Happy New Year!
Al Tindall
