Girl’s Xmas 8s Tournament
The success story of the season so far has been the growth in quantity and quality of our girl’s junior programme. So far this season our U18, U15 and U13 teams have only chalked up a single defeat –an U18 loss to a powerful Oxton team.
Credit for this progress goes to Cengiz Ilhan and the great group of managers and coaches he has assembled. When Cengiz got involved with girl’s lacrosse he very soon realised that for club players in the north of England to break through to the highest levels of the game when you practised for an hour each week and played every fortnight. This is compared to girls in the independent schools who train 4 or 5 times a week and play perhaps 1 or 2 times a week.
Rather than sitting and whinging Cengiz got his Timperley teams involved in competition with the schools and even took a team down to the Cobham Tournament in the heartland women’s Lacrosse. Unfortunately, plans to attend a tournament in Germany did not quite come off. Next year hopefully.
In attempt to provide more lacrosse for the girls Cengiz has also set up the Timperley Xmas 8s Tournament.
The Tournament will take place at Timperley on Sunday 18th December.
It will be for U13 and U15 teams.
The U13 Tournament will take place from 9.30am to 12.15pm and there are entries from Norbury, Oxton A and B teams, Timperley , Brooklands , Mellor , Cheadle and a combined team made up of players from.
The U15 Tournament will start at 1pm and finish at 3.45 with entries from Poynton, Mellor, Timperley A and B, Stockport, Brooklands and Oxton.
Hopefully, if successful, which I am sure it will be, the event will become a regular part of the calendar.

Team Behaviour
Over the last weekend the City v Chelsea game ended in a brawl with Fernandinho and Aguera receiving red cards and substantial bans; the Preston game ended with two Preston players fighting with each other because one had not passed to the other. On Sunday the Timperley v Poynton U19 game was abandoned following a brawl amongst players.
Brawls in sport, even lacrosse, are not unknown. Several years ago a Flags Final between Stockport and Cheadle ended in a fight between rival players and fans which ended in someone being knocked out and the police and ambulance being called. Knowing that the incident would make that internationally read paper, The Rochdale Observer, I thought it perhaps prudent to inform our liaison officer at Sport England. His response was that officially Sport England thoroughly condemned such behaviour and would support any appropriate action taken by the NGB. However it happened all the time in many sports and the publicity would only be good for lacrosse!
I was not at the game on Sunday but understand it was a bit niggly. The referees did a good job I understand and if the fighting had stopped the matter could have been settled by a couple of expulsions. However, the fighting continued and abandonment was the right decision.
Reffing is a challenging job, even at U12 level. I think knowledge of rules is the easy bit. The really good refs are those who have good man management skills. The great refs in any sport are those who can interact successfully with the players. In soccer Pierluigi Collina, in Rugby Nigel Owens and in lacrosse the late great Graham Lester.
Misbehaviour cannot be condoned and there should be meaningful sanctions against guilty players and clubs. What those sanctions may be is a question. I was always of a view that sanctions to be effective needed to be meaningful. If financial hundreds of pounds rather than tens of pounds but perhaps a points deduction would be more interesting. I would also think they should be across the club rather than against only the team involved. Suggestion for this instance is that each club should receive a suspended for a year two point deduction across all the senior teams.
Physical confrontation is an essential part of great team sport and occasional crossing of the line would seem to me be inevitable.
Having been beaten by Ireland in the USA the All Blacks travelled to Dublin and basically roughed up the Irish to gain their revenge. Some said just about within the rules other were not so sure.
In lacrosse Timperley has a reputation for being perhaps a little too well mannered. A senior player at Cheadle bemoaned the gentrification of the Cheadle area saying it was becoming more like Altrincham and their players were not as hard-nosed as they were in the past.
We need to maintain order but not allow players to lose their edge.

How old?!!!
Last season the lacrosse world was rocked when informed that the combined ages of the referees in the Mellor U12 v Timperley U12 was 146. It will surprise no one to hear that this year that the combined age has risen to 148. Despite the howls of anguish from players, coaches and managers not to mention spectators the two gentlemen involved have, god willing, committed to smashing the 150 barrier next season. At least from my point of view “Here’s hoping!”
State of the Game
Things have changed radically in the 60 years I have been involved in lacrosse. In the 1950s-1980s team sports were top and every Saturday was game day. Everybody played every Saturday you did not work weekends-maybe Saturday morning but never Saturday afternoon.
Many clubs ran 4 or even 5 teams and you needed about 14 players to run a 12 a side team. You did not go on holiday in the winter-skiing? What is that? The County Trials were on Boxing Day and the hugely popular Heaton Mersey 6 a sides were on New Year’s Day. Now we have a 3 week break over Xmas and New Year.
We now live in a 24/7 society where jobs regularly demand some weekend or shift working. Families are more dispersed and some weekends have to be given up to visiting relatives particularly grandparents. Modern families often involve working women as well as men so perhaps the weekend becomes more for a family to do things together Other activities intervene for instance school trips. I cannot remember going on a school trip except a few days in the Yorkshire Dales in the 2nd Form and a trip to the Lake District in the 6th Form. And we did a week’s Army Cadet Camp in the summer.
Nowadays to run a team requires around 20-25 players. I was talking to a cricketer from another club who was at Timperley for a county meeting who said they had 38 players turn out through the season for their 2nd XI.
Some sports which offer more flexible timings and do not require
Looking at this season’s league action it would seem to me that there is some cause for concern in the lower divisions. Already this season the B teams of supposedly major clubs (Cheadle, Poynton, Stockport and Timperley) have conceded games because they have been unable to raise teams.
In my view the removal of around £100K of funding from the North in the recent English Lacrosse restructuring has been a major issue which has just increased the great problems caused to North Clubs by the ending of the LDO programme. The loss of LDOs has obviously badly affected the recruitment process for many clubs but it has also deprived senior top level Lacrosse of 10 or 12 top class players. The Plan B which English Lacrosse proposed was never going to fly and they would have been better served winning the argument over LDOs which was a realistically very possible.
One of the problems in running B teams is that they are the team which ends with the problem of making up numbers following cry offs from more senior teams. One thing which should be seriously looked at is exploring the possibility of flexible playing times. We are now accepting that our working arrangements have to be more flexible therefore it seems logical that the timings of our sporting/leisure activity should be more flexible.
Initially the response to the change in lifestyle was a growth in more flexible sports and ones which do not need 20-30 players being at the same place at the same time. The result was that sports like squash, golf, running and cycling surged in popularity. Squash and golf have declined significantly recently and I would not be surprised to see cycling and running participation numbers decline in the next few years (they seem inherently boring to me! like going to the gym)
Flexible playing time merits some consideration. Last year, because of the awful weather, Timperley played a number of games in the evening on ATPs. Clearly there is potential for expanding this idea. The impetus could come from NWLA who could, for example hire a G4 ATP every Friday and even Wednesday evening to stage 2 senior games. I am told that the facility at Hough End, if it materialises will have lacrosse as a priority user and surely there are facilities available through our relationships with Manchester Univ and Manchester Met Univ.
At a junior level there is a distinct impression that not everything is as well as it could be. Some clubs seem to be doing OK .Mellor, Poynton, Heaton Mersey spring immediately to mind. Too many others are struggling. I find the growing number of combination clubs where players of a number of clubs join together to form one team a real worry. If you are a club you run teams, you do not combine with other clubs. You recruit players to play for your team at your club.
Timperley has had 30 years of being one of the leading clubs particularly in the junior game with a multitude of trophies. Success at senior level has been slightly more elusive though we do seem to be making serious progress.
The problems would seem to me to be;
• We have too many bright people who go on to University. Some like Mike Armstrong, Tommy Kirkland, Tim Blower’ Tom Bracegirdle, Ollie White and Jack Brook return to Timperley. Others do not. We are lucky that Oli Loveland has chosen to read medicine (many years !!) at Manchester Univ.
• The lack of LDOs means that compared to many years we are two good players light.
• This year we have had a real injury problem. In Tommy Kirkland, Nick Ascott, Dan Walker and Pat Sugden we have been without a whole senior defence for most of the season so far and will be without some for the rest of the year. On the sideline we have Tim Holdsworth with a long term knee problem.
• Solution; There isn’t one! We encourage people to go to University and injuries are, unfortunately, part of life.
A more serious problem for boy’s lacrosse is that we are failing to recruit enough young boys. The current U12A team has very few Yr 7 players and some of the players have been playing U12 for 3 or 4 years and still have another 1 or 2 years to go at the age group. This year’s U14 has struggled for numbers and I do not see the problem easing in the near future and only in the medium term if we develop a more effective strategy.
We have a very good schools programme and the Saturday morning programme is the envy many if not all other clubs. The challenge would seem to me to bring more boys into the Saturday morning sessions. Numbers on a Saturday morning are good but are disproportionately girls rather than boys (75% 25% would seem about right.) We are also in danger, in my view, of losing boys because they are starting to see Lacrosse as a girl’s game. The most fertile local school in recent years would seem to be Hale Prep –all boys with an extremely competitive teacher.
I am not sure what the solution to the problem is but perhaps a brain storm would be useful.
Some thoughts would be;
• We recruit at the wrong year groups. Other sports are recruiting younger (soccer and rugby) so to compete we need to recruit younger say Yrs 4 and 5.
• We need stronger male role models on the coaching team.
• Stronger promotion through siblings and friends.
• Active local publicity campaign to recruit.
• Work in secondary schools to recruit disillusioned athletes from soccer and rugby into lacrosse at U14 and U16 level.
I seriously do not know the answer is but do know that if we do not find one we will be struggling with U14 and U16 teams over the next few years.
2018 World Championship
Little concrete news though the strong rumours persist that the event will be staged at Hough End Playing Fields which will be much less redeveloped than first suggested. It is unfortunately the wrong place.
I have been involved in the staging of a number of major events including Men’s World Championships in 1978, 1994 and 2010, Women’s World Cup in 2001 and the European Men’s and Women’s European Championship in 1999. In all except 1978 my involvement was in a major leadership role.
Running an event is fairly simple and straightforward as long as the basic initial decisions are the correct ones, but it is very, very hard work for a good team of professional people and volunteers. The major decision is the venue and if that decision is wrong then success is going to be very difficult to achieve. The event will, I am sure take place, but it will not be the success it could have been if the venue had been right.

Sponsorship
Timperley has for the last few years fought it out with Mellor as to who has the best most frequently visited website in Lacrosse.
The weekly email and this newsletter go out to nearly 500 people.
Surely there is someone out there who would give a few quid to have an advert on the website or have their name associated with the newsletter?

Brexit! What the hell! Can someone explain things to me?
There are so many questions to be answered this feature could go on for weeks but having written too much already this week I will nail my colours to the mast and say that I am British and a proud European.Until the referendum I was happy to be living in a far from perfect country called England but now fear that I am condemned to living the rest of my life in an increasingly squalid and racist land which is basically run by a bunch of incompetent and fundamentally dishonest politicians representing all parties . It has always challenged me that an Oxbridge education is felt sufficient to equip you to run a country. I find it risible that someone who read Geography at Oxford in the 1960s and seventies (then one of the worst Schools of Geography in the country) should be considered to have the attributes to be PM which she certainly does not have. In my day when you said you read geography they asked what sport you played.
Luckily only one member of my extended family voted “leave” which means relations remain good particularly with my children.
To me Brexit is a catastrophe which will destroy the futures of possibly my children but certainly my grandchildren. I have many questions that I would like answering. The first being why are we leaving? , certainly on such a wafer thin majority. Your local tennis club and certainly TSC have higher standards of governance.
It would certainly help me to have some answers. The only answers I have had are, ”we won the war" (we did not; the Americans and the Russians did. If it had been left to us we would be part of Germany now) and we don’t want the Germans telling us what to do, or “we don’t want Brussels telling us we can’t cover our beaches with sewerage.”
The many, many problems we face would seem to be the result of 40 years of incompetent government rather than anything to do with the membership of the EU which has if anything papered over the cracks and taken us forward.