Are we paying too much for Walking Football?

Having recently joined The SFU as Lead on Walking Football, one of the key things I wanted to highlight was the cost of hiring pitches. As someone who has had cardiac problems in the past, I very much enjoy my time spent playing Walking Football with my local team, Shotts Bon Accord.  The main benefits to me are not just physical though; it’s been well-documented that for many people playing Walking Football is a chance to get out of the house, meet new people, improve their mental health and generally take part in the banter that is part and parcel of being a member of a football team, whether men’s or women’s.

However, there are two major problems as far as I’m concerned.  Firstly, there is the cost of hiring pitches. In my view, and from what I hear from others I’m not alone in this, this is a real obstacle to the expansion of our game.  Where our team plays, the cost of hiring a pitch is circa £400 per month (just under £47 per hour), and that’s before buying balls, kit and any other accessories. We charge £20 per member per month and we need 20 players to break even.

The other night, the park where we play was fully booked from 6pm to 9pm. It was spilt into three areas (we are only paying for one) for age groups from eight-year-olds to 80-year-olds, so the council are presumably making money from this.

Depending on the janitor responsible, we often only get about 50 minutes, because he or she wants everything to start on the hour and be finished at the top of the hour, so we have to allow time for putting out the goalposts and taking them down. In North Lanarkshire, pitch hire costs have increased massively in recent times, which means that whereas we use to be able to afford to play for two hours, we can now only afford to play for one. I hear similar stories from Glasgow and Edinburgh.  We know that the councils who often hire out the pitches Walking Football teams use are strapped for cash, but at a time when the Scottish Government (and everyone else) recognises the need to improve the overall physical, social and mental health of the population, this is surely a false economy, preventing more people from benefiting from this increasingly popular sporting activity.

The second issue, is the actual availability of pitches and the facilities/equipment provided.  Mostly we play 6, 7 or 8 a side, so do not require full parks, but too often those parks we can get are not laid out for the Walking Football’s parameters.  The goals we use are not the standard 11 or 5-a-side level sizes. Ideally, we need proper Walking Football goals and some council facilities do not have them available.

To give you an idea of some other problems, on Bank Holidays the North Lanarkshire school in Shotts (where I stay) is closed, so we had to relocate 14 people to Cleland to the new North Lanarkshire hub facility (cost: £1.3m), which has a fantastic pitch … but no changing facilities.  At least it’s open on Bank Holidays as it’s not a school, BUT the janitors are not there during the School and Bank Holidays. Finally, when we were searching for somewhere to play, we found there is no one-stop shop for North Lanarkshire Council pitches, so we were having to search individual schools and various Hub sites.  In an ideal world, it would be great if there was a Scotland-wide online directory of pitches with opening hours, pricing and the facilities, equipment and support available.

Later this year, the SFU will be conducting a survey, asking everyone who plays Walking Football what they pay for their hour or two on the field, how easy it is to find a pitch, and also some other questions about the benefits, why they do it, etc. Please watch out for this over the next few months.

The SFU will then take the findings back to both the football authorities and the Scottish Government and ask for ideas to help reduce the cost and make it easier to access the facilities so we can get more people playing this brilliant sport for the older members of our society.

Mark Lynch, SFU Lead, Walking Football