South Canterbury’s new football development officer is keen to get ball rolling on growing and improving the sport in the region.
Leigh Matthews has stepped into the role, which also covers Waitaki, after formerly working as the girls’ and women’s development officer for Southland Football.
Mr Matthews also brings with him two decades of experience coaching football in Australia, where he worked with the Football South Australia under-15 girls’ team and development squad age teams in Adelaide.
He said he had enjoyed his first three weeks in the new role.
‘‘It’s been really cool so far, I’ve met some great people, parents and kids. I’ve got a few school visits booked and I’m looking forward to those.
‘‘I think the region is quite strong but there’s opportunities for growth as well. Looking at the girls and women there’s some good players but the competition is quite small.
‘‘I think there’s a lot of potential here and like anything it will be about reaching out to clubs, listening and then doing what we can to help sustain, grow and makes things a bit more enjoyable as well.’’
He had three initial focuses for the region.
‘‘We want to see increasing participation in the women’s and girls’ game and also more refs and more coaches in those fields as well. Futsal is also a focus — growing that side of the game from the tiniest ones to the oldest ones.
‘‘At the moment there is no year 11 to 13 competition as it clashes with Timaru’s seven-a-side tournament, so we want to find ways to work around and overcome that.
‘‘The other is with immigrants. I understand there is a large number of Syrian families here, so I am going to work with getting them involved. Last year at Southland I worked with some Colombians, so that should be interesting, and a good challenge.’’
Mr Matthews said outside of those focuses there was also work to do around the competitions and finding ways to get more volunteers involved in the sport.
‘‘At the committee meeting we had here in South Canterbury, the clubs said ‘we don’t have enough people’.
‘‘So another thing will be helping clubs reach out, and see how can we get former players back, even if it’s just to run the bar or find someone who might be interested in refereeing.
‘‘There’s lots of different things to look at, kind of like a tree with lots of different branches reaching out everywhere. I just want to try and be a guide and have clubs coming to me whenever they have any issues.’’
