Thinking ahead to 2013/14

[Nigel Cooper]

The SKA committee is looking forwards and trying to plan its next league (and other events) season. Ian has circulated a provisional league schedule directly to all clubs, based on the motions passed at the AGM and an assumption that all of last season's teams will still be in action. There was also some discussion at the AGM of other (non-league, more developmental) events, and this seems like as good a place as any to share/ air them.

The first topic raised was beginners tournaments. Ed City were concerned as to whether there was any/much value in (their club)hosting one, and the answer that came back at the AGM (largely from Ed Uni) was "yes, definitely". But City were also asking for (SKA) help in running their event, and that has set us (the SKA Committee) thinking a little more than usual. One suggestion that we have come up with is that it might be beneficial to replace the traditional "beginner's tournaments" with SKA "Hat" tournaments - like (i.e. intended to be beginner friendly, and light hearted sociable fun for everyone). We would like to propose that three such SKA tournaments could be scheduled towards the beginning, middle and end of the Winter season (eg. Oct 12 - Edinburgh, Jan 18 - possibly Dundee or Glasgow?, end of season - Edinburgh for EOS party? Just suggestions!). So what do you think about that? Good, bad, anything better that you can think of?

A second "development" topic that came up briefly at the SKA AGM was the issue of developing more advanced players, refs and coaches. My first attempts at orgainising something along the "high level" lines that Gav suggested last year (see ) failed miserably, but the SKA is keen to try again next year. What we are thinking about at this point is organising a series of training events with two parallel strands. The most important one (keeping Gav's comments in mind) is to develop Scotlands "next generation" of high level players, and to do this we are proposing to re-invest in a national squad of under-23 (or 25!) players (from what I can gather, we did have one of these at some point in our past). In parallel to this, we would like to help out any of our older players that sometimes feel a little exluded too (e.g. feeling that we're not quite "good/young enough" for the national squad), and so we would invite them along to train (and compete) alongside the young guns. So who's keen for that, or who has any better ideas? Any feedback would be much appreciated.