How council cuts are helping SFA hand pitches back to the people

“Five per cent of the game is professional and gets all the focus,” says Cameron Watt, the Scottish FA’s facilities manager. “What we really want to do is shine a light on the 95 per cent.”

A thought-provoking point, and one to remind us that football for the  majority is played where the cameras do not venture: on rainy midweek nights and early weekend mornings. At any given time on any given day, somebody, somewhere, will be kicking a ball.

Watt’s job, in short, is to ensure they always have a place to do so.

“It’s what is says on the tin, really – national facilities manager,” he says. “I’ve got a remit that stretches across the country. Grassroots takes up most of my time, but where 3G pitches make their way into stadia, your role cannot help but move into the professional game as well.

“There’s an awful lot more to facilities than just me. I might be the only one with facilities in my job title, I always want to pay credit to the regional teams, they’re my eyes on the ground. I can’t possibly be aware of everything that’s going on.”

What is going on is an intriguing shift in Scotland’s grassroots football picture. Two words continually crop up in our conversation: accessibility and affordability. They are guiding principles of the SFA’s grassroots strategy from 2021 through 2025, but anyone involved in community football knows both can be a significant barrier.

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Hiring pitches is expensive, and they are not always as readily available as they might be. Most facilities sit under local authority control, but the dial is beginning to shift. This month, the BBC reported Scotland’s councils are facing a £700 million funding gap, one that leads to inevitable talk of “tough decisions” having to be made.

That usually translates to cuts and closures, but for some grassroots football clubs, it presents a unique opportunity. Instead of simply throwing up padlocks, there are mechanisms in place to allow a “community asset transfer” which, over the past few years, has facilitated the return of football facilities to the clubs which use them.

“The vast majority of facilities used by grassroots clubs sit within local authority control,” says Watt. “The reality is that picture is going to change because of the current climate. We’ve already seen a few leisure trusts return to full council management because the cost of running the organisation isn’t borne out by the benefits. We’ve seen a couple of bigger leisure trusts be subsumed back into full council.

“If councils are also now looking to off-load facilities they previously ran for the benefit of football, clearly that percentage of the game supported by the local authority estate is going to drop. So, we need to find another model of delivery, one that allows clubs to be able to support the level of growth we’re seeing in the game.

“The number of male players has stayed fairly steady over the last five years, but the women’s game has exploded. That’s only going to be more of a pressure on the estate. Growth and participation have a direct impact on the facility estate.”

Watt and his colleagues have been heavily involved in making such transitions happen.

In Glasgow, community clubs Pollok United and Easterhouse Football Academy have assumed control of venues Nethercraigs, Dennis Donnelly Park and Stepford Football Centre. Up north, the SFA aided Dyce Boys Club in taking over a library, due to be knocked down, adjacent to their pitch which was then converted into a changing room and community space. The transitions have been transformational for the clubs.

SFA facilities manager Cameron Watt (Image: SFA)

“We have relationships with the 32 local authorities across the country,” Watt says.

“That’s where the regional element is important because they have the day-to-day contact with those partners.

“I, if you like, helicopter in when the topic gets round to facilities. Glasgow Life, coming out of the Covid period, the reality was they weren’t going to be able to open their estate as it was pre-pandemic.

“So, they embarked upon what they called a community activation pilot. There were five or six identified across the city: Pollok, Easterhouse, Springburn are the larger ones.

“It was very much a combined effort with the clubs. We would look after the club from a football development and governance perspective, just making sure the terms of engagement were right, what Glasgow Life were offering was fair, realistic and sustainable.

“If it’s an asset that’s creating financial difficulties for a local authority, what’s it going to do for a volunteer-led community club? They’re not passing it on for no reason.

“It came along at a good time for us because accessibility is one of the game-changer objectives from our grassroots strategy. It allowed us to really get clubs into facilities they’d been struggling to access, purely because Glasgow Life and every other leisure trust can’t just support football, there are other community sports groups.

“In practical terms, that meant there was less pitch time for the football clubs. But now they pretty much have the facility to themselves, albeit they invite other football groups and partners in.”

Cumbernauld Colts is another success story. Without a fixed home and with as many as 300 players on their books – but without a women’s section to really speak of, nor opportunities for older adults – the club were aided in getting a lease at Broadwood.

Theirs is a prime example of how having somewhere to call your own can lay the foundation for rapid growth.

“They got into Broadwood at a time when Clyde were still there, so they were sharing with a professional club,” Watt explains. “Clyde were a couple of training nights and a game every second week, so Cumbernauld Colts had the lion’s share of the facility. I always remind them they can never lose sight of what they’ve got there: a facility that used to be a UEFA Category B stadium, Scotland U21s used to play there.

“Within two or three seasons they grew to 700-strong, unbelievable growth. I think I can safely say, without exception, that where we’ve been involved in a 3G facility, replacement or brand new, there’s never been a failure.

“Having a home is absolutely key – knowing you can depend on a facility being available at any time, and having it to support your wider activities, all the great stuff clubs do off the park. That doesn’t get shouted about enough.”

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As Watt touched upon, these opportunities do not come without considerable challenges – leisure trusts would not be so keen to off-load these places were they generating significant income. It is also a daunting undertaking for community club committees – so often comprised of just four or five ultra-commited – with little to no operational expertise. That is where the SFA can, and do, make a difference. Watt is keen to credit West Region development colleagues Corrie Campbell and Andy Gilchrist for helping steer clubs through a tricky process.

“Those guys or girls need to be supported by us,” says Watt. “At the point where Glasgow Life were pretty much looking Pollok United in the eye and asking them to take on Nethercraigs, not everything had been thrashed out.

“Corrie gave one of the club leads a wee tap on the shoulder and just said ‘Whoa, step back from this, we’re a million miles away from signing on the dotted line’. But that’s all been sorted out now and Pollok United are absolutely flying.

“It was just great to see the guys had the ability to spot something that wasn’t quite right for the club and pull them back from the brink. Partnership is a two-way street, and sometimes it was a bit too much about what the transferring partner needed out of it, not enough about the football club.”

And that is how it should be, really: grassroots clubs taking control of their own destiny, just reward for organisations who offer so much more to communities than just the chance to play football.

“It’s really, really serious stuff for us, and a major tenet of our strategy,” Watt insists.

“We’ve always been aware of access and affordability, certainly we’ve always been here to support our clubs. It’s not so much shining a light on the SFA, but the Andy Elliot’s and Gordon Keenan’s at Pollok United, Sandy Thomson at Blairgowrie and Rattray, Len Nicol up at Dyce. It’s about doing as much as we possibly can to support them in the challenges they’ve got moving forward.”