Where do little boy’s (and little girls) come from?
There is certainly a shortage of players in Lacrosse in the Manchester area. More games are being conceded and a lot played at 8-a-side.

Sport has always been big in Manchester, particularly soccer. The competition for youngsters was always going to be testing. For many years the source of players was dependent on 4 of Manchester’s Grammar Schools, Cheadle Hulme School, Manchester GS, Stockport GS and William Hulme’s GS and other schools who took on the sport like Broadway and Audenshaw GS. When these schools for a variety of reasons all gave up the sport it was left to the clubs, who were left to pick up the baton.

From the early 1980s until the 2010s the driver of participation was the Local Development Officer programme. Young US lacrosse playing graduates were recruited to assist in promoting and developing Lacrosse. By delivering introductory sessions in schools youngsters were encouraged to go down to their local club to play Lacrosse. The scheme increased the numbers playing Lacrosse and at the same time improved the quality of play.

The scheme collapsed because of a mixture of negligence and utter incompetence. One can perhaps understand there being some issues with girl’s independent schools who took on board US graduates as really supplementary teachers and paid them as such. However, the scheme supported by the Men’s clubs was completely different with the clubs hosting a coach for a limited period as an opportunity for the coach to experience another country and remain involved with the sport.

For the last couple of years the lack of LDOs has been a real barrier to recruitment. Timperley is fortunate that this season we have been able to secure the service of two LDOs who have entered the country on Irish passports.

Levels of recruitment seem to vary significantly from club to club. On Saturday Timperley U12 were hosted by Norbury and at the same time Norbury U14 were hosting Rochdale. Norbury seemed to have players coming out of their ears with each team having around 16 players. The previous Saturday Timperley U12 hosted Cheadle Hulme, who did not have a full team.

One of the responses to the challenge is for clubs to combine with other clubs to field mongrel teams. To a point one can perhaps understand the motivation but when a combined team arrives with 20 players and where a team has clearly been put together to win silverware you do question the motivation. It is in my book cheating. To put it bluntly the situation is a disgrace and certainly mongrel teams should certainly not be allowed to enter competitions. Allowing teams to do so is a deterrent to clubs putting the extra effort required to recruit.

English Lacrosse would seem to have abdicated their responsibility for the development of grass roots participation with two very competent officers in the North West now seemingly responsible largely for performance. The responsibility for participation would seem to have been devolved to regional associations. There is certainly the knowledge and capability to structure a successful Development Programme amongst people in the North West so perhaps a starting point would be for NWLA to bring the clubs together to examine why some clubs are more successful than others. Basically a pooling of knowledge and experience.

POP Lacrosse at TLC
For more than ten years the driver behind Timperley success, particularly at junior level, has been the Saturday morning starter sessions led by Di Gill. When Di announced that she was going to “retire” you could only fear the worst. However, under the leadership of Alan Holdsworth (as if he did not have enough to do!) the handover to a new regime has been seamless.

Around 40 youngsters turn up every Saturday morning to start playing Lacrosse.

I think one of the best measures of success is that you set something which continues to thrive when you have left it.

Thanks Di.

Social Media at TLC
The more eagle eyed will have noted that we are working to improve and increase our social media presence. Besides having the TLC website, and the Weekly Newsletter which should drop into your inbox every Sunday evening / Monday morning with results and forthcoming fixtures and every Wednesday with a full round up of the week’s matches and other activity along with News and views, we have opened a Community Face Book page and are becoming more active on Twitter.

Our hope is that our increased activity will increase the feeling of “one club”, raise the profile of TLC and hopefully attract people who would like to play a new sport.

Even a Luddite like me has soon realised that a successful social media presence is very much driven by content and activity so everyone needs to help by providing news and by using all our platforms.

Lancashire Girls
Timperley had a great turn out for the U18 county tournament at Moreton Hall Shropshire. We had 19 players between the two teams.

A team players
Emilly Hall
Emily Richardson
Erin Pollard
Lauren Cheyne
Lexi Molnar
Ellie Racle
Elise Humblet
Miranda King
Gabby Wardle

B team players
Henry Wright
Maddie Lord
Alice Allan
Emma Coglhan
Kelly Cheng
Elana Rink
Anna Green
Charlotte Christian
Nina Ilhan

Both teams had a good tournament, the B team winning their last game against Yorkshire which was great result.

The A team played some great Lacrosse but lost out 7-3 to Cheshire and 9-8 to Yorkshire. The stand out team were Shropshire A who had England and Wales U19 players in their team.

A team players Lauren, Erin, Lexi and Emilly who were playing their last tournament played some great Lacrosse never giving up with Emilly Hall getting MVP for the tournament. Lauren, Emilly H and Emily Richardson getting on the score sheets.

All the games were played with great spirit with some fair umpiring all round.
As always a big thank you to Shropshire for their hospitality.

A Brexit Post Script
The few people who read what I write will have deduced that I do not think that Brexit is a very smart idea and that basically our politicians from both parties are frighteningly incompetent and are trashing the futures of my children and grandchildren. They have divided our country and the idea that we should all get together to make a success of Brexit is so ludicrous that it is untenable.

Although I could write for ever on the subject I realise that that would be an indulgence. So I intend to limit myself to a brief comment on an irregular basis.

A much quoted comment from Willy Brandt, the German Chancellor, is “If I am selling to you, I speak your language. If I am buying, dann mussen sie Deutsch sprechen.”

The idea that everyone in the world speaks English is an illusion and in the UK Nick Cleggs, who can speak 5 languages, are hardly common. Those who travel frequently will know that although Europeans are more likely to speak English than English are to speak French , Italian or Spanish it is by no means a given. If you try to do an online reservation at a leading Berlin hotel you will find that the application is only available in German.

Some English schools offer a broad range of languages. Manchester GS for example offers French, German, Italian, Mandarin Chinese, Russian and Spanish. I am sure Altrincham schools offer a number of languages though it was disturbing to read that Altrincham Boys GS was dropping German because of lack of resources and lack of interest.

Whatever the outcome of the Brexit shambles, the UK must try and build a future as a trading nation and trade deals with English speaking nations such as Australia and New Zealand are unlikely, certainly in the short term. The response from Australians I have spoken to is “Why would we want to do deals with you? You were not interested in us when you joined the EU. Anyway we are Asian and we sell to India and China and buy our cars from Japan, Malaysia and Korea.”

To be effective internationally we need to produce linguists. So it was depressing today to hear the Headmaster of Burnage High School (himself a linguist) say that his priority was to produce people who were numerate and literate and he did not have the resources to offer languages.