COMMUNITY FOOTBALL
NARRABEEN FC Peter, you are one of the main driving forces behind the resurgence of the Narrabeen Football Club. What’s the club doing as a community venture for local kids? We are bringing back a local vibe for our community, helping local kids. We now have our own internal program, with our own coaches, teaching the Narrabeen way. Our football program is purely funded by the business sponsors of the club with our main focus to get kids playing the sport and shining in the football arena. What’s your thought on these academy based teams coming into the area and piggy-backing off the football clubs, which essentially you have to pay to have your teams professionally coached. What have you set up at Narrabeen Football club instead? NFC is not interested in getting outside academies to come in and get paid to coach our own kids. NFC doesn’t believe and don’t see the need for mums and dads to pay these Academy teams. They are purely for profit business models that are simply there to make money and leveraging off the back of traditional older local clubs to make a buck.
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What’s the real problem? Are these academy teams loading up their teams with the talented kids with wealthy parents? One of the major problems is they are simply just business models, the more you pay, the more they need to win. So, they are always on a poaching
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IF YOU WANT TO SEE YOUR KIDS’ FOOTBALL CAREER EXCEL, CHECK OUT, THE BEENIES! OTHERWISE KNOWN AS, THE NARRABEEN FOOTBALL CLUB. BEACHES COVERED. ED D. PUBLISHER, JOHN VICKERY SAT DOWN WITH CLUB MEMBER ER PETER GILES TO GET INSIDE THE CLUB’S BRAINS TRUST TO FIND OUT WHAT THE SUBCULTURE WAS ALL ABOUT.
drive taking all the good kids out of the local teams, telling parents if you ever want your kid to be successful you need to be in an academy team. This is stripping clubs of talent and undermining the whole Manly Warringah Football Association (MWFA) system. What’s the standard of coaches at Narrabeen? Are they the same as these academies or are they better? We’re here to coach the kids the NFC way. We do have a professional coach with football licence, as head coach for the club. Is this different from other clubs that use parent coaches? Yes, 100%. We still have parent coaches, however our program works like this. We don’t just train individuals, we teach teams. In that team is a coach and manager. They are part of the program; we teach them different styles and skills on how to coach their team better. We have MWFA backing our coaching courses and MiniRoos courses and skills training courses. If you want to be part of the Narrabeen program, we want you to do these courses so you know how to coach the NFC football curriculum. Our major benefit is the parents, trained by our highly professional licenced football coaches, become highly competent and they stay on as great coaches for years and years. The great thing about this youth program is the parents, coaches and managers build a mutual respect for each other as they have worked together as a team in the courses.
What businesses are funding the program and what do they bring to the table? Through sponsorship the businesses donate money to keep kids in sport. Besides the branding around the club community, they do it for no return and only to support the kids. Some of those businesses don’t even have kids in the club but want to sponsor the club and the kids. It’s purely old school caring for the community and driving a great activity for keeping kids in sport. What’s the difference in what you do versus one of the other big local clubs? Academies are popping up everywhere. But why would you spend money on these other academies when you don’t need to. At NFC, you’re getting professional coaching, local community, and everyone is a family here. Would you say that these academies are destroying the grass roots club atmosphere of soccer? Is it more about the cash than community? The question I have for you - as a father of a child who plays soccer, what’s the most you’re wanting to get out of soccer? Their happiness is important, not paying more for supposedly good coaching. A community environment is where you need to be at. At NFC we’re providing parents the opportunity of professional training skills. You can know absolutely nothing about coaching when you first come here, but you will be trained on how to coach and have fun learning it. Who is the Narrabeen’s head coach and what is his calibre? Juan Malzoni is NFC’s A-grade licenced professional head coach and he’s from Argentina. Juan is an ex-Boca Junior player from Buenos Aires’ number one club in the National League. Messi and Maradona all played for this club. That’s all that needs to be said.
