Even though the expected number of children was not there, those that made it had fun and learnt a lot - which is the main aim of the programme. A total of 10 schools from the Free State, as well as nine football clubs, came together for the Grassroots festival held at the Central University of Technology (CUT) in Bloemfontein on Saturday, 18 September, 2010.
The first phase of the programme was hosted in Tshwane and Mafikeng, respectively.
The children were led by 30 SAFA instructors who had just completed a week-long seminar in Bloemfontein. The main aim of the seminar was to empower coach educators on how to organise the grassroots festivals, which are used to introduce children to football from the ages of 6 to 12.
The festival was declared open by the South African Football Association (SAFA) president Kirsten Nematandani, who said the programme was close to his heart, but still needs to be promoted countrywide.
"This programme is important because it addresses basic issues of football development from an early age. This is where we get them to have fun and get the feel of the ball, basically giving them the foundation; hence we say it is critical to have such sessions. And these are the correct ages for children going to school, which means we need to reach out to each and every school and teacher to help us in this regard. The coaches that went to the seminar have a duty to train the others - hence we call this the 'train the trainer' programme. We are in partnership with the Departments of Education and Sport for this reason. But what is also very critical is the involvement of parents in this programme, because it begins at home. We need the mothers and fathers to learn to coach this basic elementary and to play with their children in their own back yard, because that's where it all begins," he said.
FIFA development officer Ashford Mamelodi, who was also part of the proceedings, said it is crucial to start at the beginning as there are no short cuts to success.
"If you start without grass roots it's like saying you can go to university without going through primary and high school. Football is a school of life, so these kids need to be taught from as young as possible. But we often find that we have stars in our midst who start too late and, because of that, they miss out on certain fundamentals and drop out unexpectedly from the game. So grass roots is very important, and you can see the results from most powerful footballing nations who started at an early age. In Brazil they do it differently. They play street football when they are young, and they play for such a long time that when they are spotted by scouts they are almost like seasoned players, so we need to introduce grass roots to the young ones so they can ultimately have their skill developed for competition, because, at this level, there is no competition. It's still social, they must enjoy themselves. Going forward, they will then decide whether they want to continue with the sport or not."
There will be another seminar of coach-educators which will be held at the Southern Sun Hotel from Monday until Thursday, 23 September. The seminar will be followed by the festival on Friday, 24 September. It will be held at the Kimberly Technical School, from 9am until noon.
