THE Football Federation of South Australia continues to acknowledge its regional roots, with a community forum held on Wednesday night to discuss soccer in the South East.
That comes off the back of the recent inception of the Regional Centre of Excellence, which has provided a pathway for talented juniors in the area.
The FFSA will hold two more forums across the state, as it aims to strengthen the bond with regional soccer associations.
Clinics have also been held at various South East primary schools over the last few days, while FFSA coach education manager and former Adelaide United player Cristiano dos Santos ran a course for C-licence coaches yesterday evening.
FFSA general manager of football development Paul Marcuccitti was impressed by the attendance at Wednesday’s forum, which saw a total of 35 people represent clubs in both the Limestone Coast and South East Women’s Football Associations.
“A lot of the local clubs were represented and we also had people from Naracoorte and Millicent,” he said.
“The breadth of the representation was excellent.”
One of the major points raised during the forum was the management of the large number of miniroos and how to keep them in the game as they transition into Under 12’s.
With so many youngsters in the program, it has been a struggle to distribute them all into teams as the move up to the next age group.
“Many people felt there might need to be an increase to the number of teams available in the Under 12’s,” Marcuccitti said.
“Often there are enough numbers to have more than one team per club.
“It is just the difficulties of finding times and spaces for that which has been a limitation.”
A further aim of the forum and school visits was for FFSA to reach out to regional areas and inform them of the work it is doing behind the scenes.
“The intent was to tell people about a lot of the work we are doing they might not know about,” Marcuccitti said.
“That includes things like football in schools.
“As part of this trip we have had coaches go out to facilitate sessions in Mary Mackillop in Penola, Mount Gambier North Primary School and (yesterday) morning we were at St Martins.”
The Centre of Excellence was also a talking point at the forum and Marcuccitti said the program has been successful in its early days.
“I think people are really pleased the Centre Of Excellence has been rolled out and they think it is a terrific idea,” he said.
“There is a bit of concern about some of the people who might be selected from outside of Mount Gambier, as it essentially works as an after school program.
“We acknowledge this is the very early stages of the program and we will work to make sure it provides as much opportunity as possible for people no matter where in the South East they are.”
The FFSA attended a Centre of Excellence session on Wednesday and Marcuccitti was impressed by the talent on show.
“There are some terrifically talented players there and we are really pleased we can help develop them as much as we can,” he said.
“So far we are very pleased with the way it is going, but there are certainly a lot of things we can make work better in it as well.”
