Harrogate
& District FA
affiliated to
West Riding County FA (WRCFA)
affiliated to
Football Association
(FA)
affiliated to
European Football
Association (UEFA)
affiliated to
Federation
of International Football (FIFA)
Any decision of FIFA, in regard to
the laws under which the game is played, for example a change of a new rule
for goalkeepers - for the 2000 European Championships - is made by the world
body and thus affects the four Home Country Football Associations.
Although changes in laws are circulated
widely, many players still learn them in a haphazard manner, often through
newspapers, with the resultant problem of interpretation. This is so with
many other sports.
Many of the national governing bodies
of sport are making wide-ranging changes for the development of their sports.
As an example, since the formation of the England & Wales Cricket Board
(ECB) in 1997 cricket has made changes which are designed to modernise the
game and make it more competitive, exciting and accessible to everyone in society (social inclusion).
Many sports have now adapted versions
of their sport to make them more accessible and appealing to younger players,
and to assist development. Examples of this include Mini Soccer, Short Tennis,
Kwik Cricket and Uni Hoc.
National governing bodies and their
district/county/regional boundaries for their administration not only vary
from one organisation to another but also with boundary anomalies which
often overlap those of Regional Sports Federations, Sport England regions
and local authorities.
In 1970 the then Advisory Sports Council
and CCPR investigated the possibility of rationalising the national picture
for governing bodies, but with only little success. In 2002 there were indications
of some steps being taken to rationalise some aspects of governing body
administration, which was illustrated when the four English Bowling Associations
- men's and women's, indoor and outdoor - met at Leamington Spa to consider the pros and
cons of forming a single unified governing body.
Examples of national governing bodies
in England are:
The Football Association (England) with 43
County Associations and 42,000
clubs. The dateline for deciding FA County boundaries was 1927 since when
there have been local authority boundary changes (but not the FA's) the
greatest of which followed local authority re-organisation, 1974 in England (and 1975
in Scotland).
Examples of anomalies are:
·
West Riding
County FA: has 13 affiliated District Associations situated in four different
local authority counties with overlaps with some Sport England Regions and
Regional Sports Federations but Derbyshire CFA - also with county overlaps - has 900 clubs (550 referees)
but unlike WRCFA has no District Associations. There is also an overlap of three local authority counties and two
Sport England regions.
·
London County FA: with a boundary 12 miles from Charing Cross, overlaps with Essex CFA and two counties and two Sport England
regions.
·
Sheffield and Hallamshire CFA : With a boundary
20 miles from Sheffield Parish Church
which overlaps with Nottingham,
Amateur Rowing Association
Although smaller than the FA, the
ARA has an outstanding record for excellence. They have the oldest governing
body manual in the world. The Association is administered on a regional
basis but it also has anomalies, with an overlap of local authority and
Sport England boundaries. The regional clubs range from the smallest region
of six clubs in Yorkshire to East Anglia, with 21 clubs
British Fencing Association (BFA)
The BFA has a county administration,
but again there is some overlap in some areas.
Boxing
Boxing is also looking at bringing
together both the amateur and professional bodies of the Home Country Boxing
Associations.
British Paralympic Society (BPA)
The BPA was incorporated as a Company
in April 1989 and registered as a charity in November 1989.
INTERNATIONAL FEDERATIONS BASED IN THE UK
UK Sport continues to provide support
to those international Federations that choose to locate their headquarters
in the UK. There are
currently (2003) 13 international federations in the UK, a sign that
in the world of international sport, the UK is a respected
and influential sporting nation.
International Federation Location
Commonwealth Games Federation
London
International
Badminton Federation. Cheltenham
International Cricket Council London
International Netball Federation
Birmingham
International Sailing Federation Southampton
International Tennis Federation London
International Table Tennis Federation
St Leonards
International Wheelchair Sports Federation
Stoke Mandeville
Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews St Andrews
World Bowls Board
Worthing
World Curling Federation
Perth
World Professional Billiards &
Snooker Assoc. Bristol
World Squash Federation
Hastings
INVESTMENT IN VOLUNTARY SPORT
Sensible development of sport and
recreation is hampered by the number of Government Departments whose policies,
various NDPBs and decisions impact upon sport and recreation. There are
many Government Departments that impact on sport and recreation policies,
and a new UK Sport and Recreation Act has been proposed to resolve the current
confusions in the organisation of sport. Policies affecting fiscal, environmental,
educational, public sector, regional and local government and cultural areas
of activity all impact upon sport, as does the emerging policy on voluntary
sector sport and development. There have been unforeseen consequences of
government action which have impacted negatively on sport and recreation,
especially the voluntary sector on which the government depends so heavily
on for delivery.
THE COMMERCIAL SECTOR
The commercial/private sector has
significantly increased its contribution to opportunities for participation
in sport and recreation during the last two decades, especially through
leisure clubs offering individual activities and fitness and exercise advice
and support. Many professional sports clubs also offer support through coaching,
educational programmes, player visits and access to facilities at community
level. The use of private capital to secure planning gain for sport, and
as matched funding for new facilities, has added to the range of opportunities
for the public. But such developments are piecemeal and often un-coordinated,
and there has been no systematic audit of the range of opportunities offered,
or the range of beneficiaries, of this sector's provision.
WORLD CLASS EVENTS PROGRAMME
Sport matters to the British public
and the excitement that is generated from watching international sporting
stars competing on British soil. We also know the importance to our own
sportsmen and women of competing in major international competitions in
front of a home crowd.
Money from the National Lottery not
only supports the World Class Performance Programme, but also provides assistance
with the bidding and staging of major events through the World Class Events
Programme.
Although the Olympic Games have not
been to these shores since 1948 or the football World Cup since 1966, the
United Kingdom has hosted many international sporting
events. In 2000 England hosted the
Cricket World Cup, Wales hosted the
Rugby World Cup (although both events involved venues across the UK), the World
Judo Championships took place in Birmingham, the World
Cross Country in Belfast and the Orienteers
of the world converged on Inverness in Scotland for the World
Championships.
Lottery support provides an investment
that helps ensure quality and achieve their potential in other areas, such
as volunteer development, training and recruitment of officers, improvements
in facilities and showcasing our best athletes.
WORLD CLASS PERFORMANCE PROGRAMME
SportScotland and the Sports Council
for Northern Ireland's Talented
Athlete Programmes, and the Sports Council for Wales' Elite Cymru
programme also target Lottery money at those sportsmen and women with the
potential to win medals. Unlike UK Sport and Sport England's World Class
Performance Programme, Lottery money is given directly to the athletes to
buy in the services they require, rather than being channelled through the
sport's governing body and its Performance Director.
Those sports which organise themselves
and compete on a home country basis, can also benefit
from Lottery money through their individual home country Sports Councils.
Sport England administers
money through the World Class Performance Programme to the elite programmes
of English based sports, and also has two other tiers for Lottery investment
- World Class Potential and World Class Start. World Class Potential identifies
talent and focuses Lottery money at developing those athletes who have the
potential to reach the medal podium within the next ten years. World Class
Start aims to identify and support the talent of a number of athletes who
have demonstrated the necessary characteristics to be medal-winners of the
future. The focus is to provide a tangible continuum of sport - 'Start'
feeds 'Potential' which in turn feeds 'Performance'. Not all sports have
Start and Potential programmes yet, however, these
are being developed by several sports that currently have Performance programmes.
ECONOMIC IMPACT OF MAJOR SPORTS EVENTS
To determine the extent that major
events within the UK provide a
significant boost to both the local and the national economy, Economic Impact
Studies were undertaken at three major events supported through the World
Class Events Programme.
The three events covered during the
year were: the European Show Jumping Championships at Hickstead in August
1999, the World Judo Championships in October, and the World Climbing Championships
in December, both in Birmingham. The results
highlighted the differing effects on the local community of hosting major
international sporting events covering areas such as increased hotel use
and local expenditure from the extra numbers of visiting competitors, officials
and spectators.
Source: UK Sport
SOCIAL ASPECTS OF SPORT / Sports
Spectating
The following is a contribution by John Williams, Director of the Sir Norman
Chester Centre for Football Research, Leicester University:
The cultural critic Martin Jacques
has described the current era as the Age of Sport. Sports stars are the
cultural icons and authority figures, sought after by sponsors and advertisers,
courted by politicians and studied by academics. Why else is the debate
about staging the Olympic Games in London in 2012 such
a hot topic for the public and even our still-cautious
politicians?
Where, once, sports such as football
were lowbrow, now they are the stuff of intellectual debate. In Europe, where industrial
innovation is hedged in with restrictive practices and underperformance,
football's post-industrial digital television focus has made it one of the
great European success stories. Top English football, especially, has been
held up by politicians, including Tony Blair, as a British modernising triumph.
Trapped in the 1980s in a negative
cycle of tribal hooliganism, poor public image, stumbling leadership and
disintegrating stadiums, the sport has been transformed over the past two
decades by better facilities, a new generation of aggressive, commercial
administrators and marketing techniques. Attendances have surged as prices
have rocketed. Football fandom, at some of the larger English clubs at least,
has become less a social marker, more a form of conspicuous consumption.
The result? FA Premiership
fan surveys conducted at Leicester University since the
mid-1990s suggest that a high number of football's new fans are affluent,
female, and view following sport as a leisure option, not a matter of life
or death.
Other sports have been trying to follow
suit. While cricket tries gallantly to house both the MCC and the Barmy
Army, rugby union has traditionally been ghettoised in a different way:
by its amateur ethos, ramshackle facilities and administration, its
condescending 'toffs' social profile, and its apparent determination to
rule out any contact or compromise with the tainted professionals from the
'north'. The accusation about union and toffs, of course, always masked
a much more complex picture. In the southwest and west of England, and in parts
of the north and Midlands, rugby union
has always been favoured by the working man as well, both on and off the
field.
How will the fans from the Shed at
Gloucester match up
with typical Harlequins followers? Do Leicester Tigers supporters look different
from those following football neighbours Leicester City? And what
of the fanatics who follow both codes? Now professionalised, rugby union
is no longer, it seems, hostile to contacts or even partnerships with other
sports. One top club, Leeds Tykes, shares a stadium with the previously
despised league men from Leeds RLFC, and three of the big southern rugby
union strongholds - Wasps, London Irish and Saracens - have uprooted to
play at football stadiums. "Crossover" fandom seems an obvious outcome.
In football the struggle between the
powerful clubs and the national associations seems to be over: the clubs
are in command. In cricket the national team still rules, while the counties
stumble along.
In rugby union the club owners are
still at odds with the England hierarchy
as the sport struggles to find a balance that rewards both the clubs and
the Twickenham elite. How these tensions work out may determine the trajectory
of rugby union in England as a potential
challenger to football
