Elders and Betters

The Football Association recently launched the second in its series of Respect films featuring British actor Ray Winstone, aimed at highlighting the pressures placed on young footballers by angry and aggressive parents.

Entitled Elders and Betters, the 75 second clip features Winstone calling for parents to relax their behaviour from the sidelines, and change the way they behave towards their children before, during and after matches. Winstone’s passioned pleas are interspersed with scenes from a youth game, where a father berates, humiliates and intimidates his son on the touchline for a supposed poor performance.

The hard hitting film, following on from Winstone’s role in the Two Rays film earlier this year, aims to reach out to parents as FA research revealed that thousands of youngsters had stopped playing regularly because of too much pressure from the sidelines.

Alongside the film, The FA has launched a Respect Parent Guide, which gives help and advice to parents and carers on improving conduct on the sidelines and promoting themselves as positive role models, with the ultimate aim of keeping children in the game.

The new film and Respect Parent Guide have been distributed to 15,000 youth clubs across the country to be shared at dedicated parents’ evenings ahead of the new grassroots season, and they form just one element of The FA’s Respect Programme which aims to clean up behaviour in all forms of the game.

The Programme launched at the start of the 2008-09 season and provides a series of tools for leagues, clubs, coaches, Referees, players and parents from grassroots to elite football to ensure a safe, positive environment in which to enjoy the game. Currently 35,000 clubs – one third of youth teams in the country – have signed up to the Programme reporting positive results and The FA is hoping to build on this success in the new season. This includes using spectator barriers, as well as club officials, players and parents signing codes of conduct.