Are You Interested in Non-League Football?

Go Bewdley Town!

Nice site.

 

Thanks...looks an interesting read.

PaulC - RedWeb
http://www.buystirlingalbion.org.uk
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=198214620098

 

It is nice to see a real fan on here.
I am a FC HALIFAX TOWN FAN.
Have you got all the unibond premier north & south badges ?
I have over 200 from the premiership down to the unibond north & south

 

Journeymen in Non-League Football? not well paid really

BLUE SQUARE PREMIER
Saturday August 8: AFC Wimbledon 1 Luton Town 1 (4488), Altrincham 1 Ebbsfleet
United 1 (914), Cambridge United 0 Barrow 2 (2990), Forest Green Rovers 1
Kettering Town 2 (1074), Gateshead 0 Histon 3 (681), Grays Athletic P Chester
City P, Kidderminster Harriers 1 Hayes & Yeading United 0 (1471), Mansfield Town
4 Crawley Town 0 (3264), Oxford United 2 York City 1 (6403), Rushden & Diamonds
0 Salisbury City 2 (1272), Stevenage Borough 1 Tamworth 1 (2130), Wrexham 3
Eastbourne Borough 0 (3726).


JOURNEYMEN FOOTBALLERS FACE PITCH BATTLE
By Nick Harris, from The Guardian

Jerry Gill is a flexible job-seeker, and in these tough times he needs to be.
He's a professional footballer. Forget the Community Shield at Wembley between
Manchester United and Chelsea tomorrow. Most footballers outside the Premier
League face an employment market that mirrors society at large; fewer jobs,
shorter, less-secure contracts and falling pay as supply outstrips demand.

The Professional Footballers' Association (PFA), with 4000 members in England,
says the number of out-of-contract players has risen from 500 to 600 in a
typical summer to around 800 this year. The Scottish PFA, with 700 members,
estimates a fifth or more have been on the move, or on their way out of the
game. Simon Barker, a senior PFA executive, says: "Clubs have been releasing
more players, taking fewer on and decreasing budgets. Below the Premier League,
players are being hired on shorter contracts and lower basic pay."

The recession could make for an austere 2009-10 season, which starts today for
non-Premier League clubs. The collapse of broadcaster Setanta has compounded the
problem, especially in England's non-League Conference, and in Scotland's SPL.
Setanta was a major paymaster for both.

Gill, a 38-year-old defender, has been among those looking for work. Last season
he was a player-coach with Forest Green Rovers in the Conference Premier, the
fifth tier of English football. Setanta's demise, two years into a five-year
contract, will mean a shortfall in the budgets of Conference clubs of between
GBP70,000 and GBP200,000 per season.

Colin Peake, a Conference board member and a Rovers spokesman, says: "It's not a
secret that losing the TV deal hurt our League. "At my own club, we had a
first-team squad of 22 last season. That will now have to drop." Gill says that
Forest Green's playing budget will fall from around GBP400,000 per year to about
GBP300,000. His own departure was one consequence of the fall in revenue. They
couldn't offer me a package to stay," he says. "The manager said it was purely a
financial decision."

Gill's CV includes a five-year spell at Birmingham City which ended with
promotion to the Premier League in 2002. "Incomparable," he says of the spectrum
of football lifestyles. "At Birmingham we saw masseurs on a daily basis, had the
best lunches laid on, stayed at good hotels. On the way to my first Forest Green
away match last season, we were on the bus to Crawley and, at about 4pm, I asked
our manager Jim Harvey what we had planned for dinner. He just laughed and said,
'Look around'. The lads were eating sandwiches and crisps: that was the
pre-match meal.

"We didn't really do overnight stays, except once in Barrow, and it was a bit
Fawlty Towers. And the wages are just not comparable. At the top, if you're
sensible, you should be set for life when you stop. At the lower end, you need
to have a job when you stop playing."

Footballers' pay is notoriously hard to pin down, though a survey of PFA members
in 2006 gave the most recent reliable indication. The average basic pay of
Premier League players was GBP676,000 per year (GBP13,000 a week), while those
at Championship clubs earned GBP195,750 (GBP3,764 a week), and those in Leagues
One and Two earned GBP67,850 (GBP1,305) and GBP49,600 (GBP954) respectively.

Top-level pay has continued to grow, exponentially. Elsewhere, anecdotal
evidence suggests it might have fallen. Some basic salaries in the lower Leagues
are as low as a few thousand pounds a year, with performance-related additions.

In Scotland, wages are highest at Celtic and Rangers but fall off rapidly,
typically to between GBP20,000 and GBP30,000 a year, for full-time staff in the
First Division. That figure is not dissimilar to what full-time players at
Conference clubs in England earn, although pay packets vary widely from club to
club.

Gill is among the majority who need to keep earning well beyond their playing
days, and he has planned ahead. He hopes to play for a non-league club this
season but has taken his coaching badges and last week reached the final two in
a 110-candidate race to become the new manager of Cambridge United, before
missing out. Management remains his aim. Gill has also been coaching youngsters
as part of Birmingham City's football in the community scheme, and has a
fledgling business selling sports kit by an Italian firm, Errea, in the
Cheltenham and Gloucester areas. "I've been lucky in my career but you also make
your own luck," he says. "I also believe if you put the work in, behave the
right way, it'll come back to you. But this recession is a reality check for a
lot of people. All I know is I need to work, to support my wife and two sons."

The PFA provides help and financial support for hundreds of its members each
year to prepare them for life after playing. "We try to encourage everyone while
still playing to take appropriate qualifications to ease them into a life after
football," says Pat Lally, the PFA's director of education. "Outside the Premier
League, the lads need to work after football, and that's truer than ever when
times are this tough." Lally says the recession is harming lower-League players
in particular. In the 2007-08 season, the PFA gave out 900 retraining or
educational grants, a figure that jumped to 1200 in 2008-09 and which continues
to rise.

The PFA pays GBP1500 towards any vocational course a member takes, and GBP1000 a
year towards degree courses. The union also helps fund and run a popular course
in sports journalism for former players, in Staffordshire, and a BSE in
physiotherapy, available in Salford and York, among others.

Lally cites the case of Colin Murdock, a one-time Manchester United trainee
recently released by League Two Accrington, who is being helped to study law,
and the recent cases of Tony Bird, whose clubs included Swansea and Cardiff, and
Gavin Peacock, once of Newcastle and Chelsea. Bird was funded to do a
dog-grooming course and now runs a business in that field, while Peacock
received funds to help towards his master's in divinity. "Think of an occupation
and we've probably helped a player train for it," says Lally. "Everything from
construction and engineering to law, medical studies and pathology."

Football's fickle nature is reflected in the situation of Sean Hessey, 30, who
is starting the final year of a two-year deal with Macclesfield Town in League
Two. As a boy he was in the same Liverpool youth team as England's Steven
Gerrard and Michael Owen. As a man, he has no complaints about a 14-year
professional career that has given him "a good living from the game" at the
likes of Huddersfield, Kilmarnock, Blackpool and Chester. But in the first week
of pre-season training last month he suffered an injury to his medial ligament
in his left leg and will be unable to play for three months at least. His
contract is secure, until next summer at least, but his situation has led him to
think ahead. He says: "I think every day, 'What can I do when I stop playing?'
I've never been out of work but I know guys with mortgages and families and it's
tough."

Fraser Wishart, chief executive of PFA Scotland, says: "It's ironic, at a time
when there's never been so much money in football, at least in the Premier
League and the Champions League, that never have we had so many clubs in
financial difficulties."


Barrow AFC unofficial home page: www.barrowafc.net

 

Re: Journeymen in Non-League Football? not well paid really

2583 - I wonder if that's the best weekend average for this level.

 

I've got a blog about following non-league side Bath City FC. It is at http://nedvedsnotes.blogspot.com/ I am an American living in England so I try to make it accessable for American readers and I also write a lot of entries on the differences between British and American sports.

 

cool.



why a pig?

 

The pig is a symbol of Bath. The legendary founder of Bath, King Bladud, found the healing waters of Bath when his pigs were wallowing in a spring.

Thanks for visiting the blog!

 

Cool.

Interesting. I was wondering because nickname of the fans of the crosstown rival of my beloved Sheffield Wednesday F.C. (UP YOU MIGHTY OWLS!) is the "pigs".

 

And I spend my life looking for non-league footballers interested in giving Australian club football a go

www.ozsoccerexperience.com

 

cool. good luck.