Come On – Be A Sport, Linda Whitney, London Evening Standard

It was a particularly dispiriting article that I’m sure had the opposite intention. Linda Whitney had set out to show how sport is growing as an industry and consequently so are the number and range of jobs involved in sport. Whitney talks about receptionists, catering and leisure centre instructors starting at around 13,000 and then working your way up the ladder to managerial positions in marketing or design on 50,000 plus. It all sounds very enticing. Whitney then explains, The sports world is becoming more professionalized, so employers are willing to take on candidates from other sectors providing they have the right skills.

She then quotes Will Lloyd from the sports recruitment agency, Sports Recruitment International who says, Candidates need solid evidence of financial, legal, sales, marketing or commercial skills Without so much as a journalistic thought, Whitney bites straight away. The rest of the article blandly outlines many of the different commercial opportunities that are opening up in the industry. Job done. Whitney goes home believing she may have inspired some youngsters to get involved in the live your dream sports industry while at the same time keeping her editor at the Evening Standard Jobs section satisfied for another week.

It’s not so much what Whitney serves up that is so dispiriting but rather what she totally fails to deliver. Yes, sport is a growing industry with many service, commercial and managerial posts on offer. But, far more challenging, sport is also about developing social cohesion by, amongst other things, connecting disaffected youth to both their communities and themselves. It’s also about reconnecting communities that have become fragmented into separate and sometimes hostile ghettos, made separate by income, ethnicity and cultural difference. In short, it’s about nurturing and mentoring, but these skills are totally off the radar for Ms Whitney.

One of the most satisfying components of my twenty year stretch at the helm of my community sports club has been to help nurture and watch a whole new generation of coaches/administrators come through the ranks who then, in turn, start the very same process. This has absolutely nothing to do with commercial prowess but rather a more old fashioned process of hand-me down skills from one generation to another. In short, it’s the skills of the good classroom teacher who motivates their young charges to go forward with increased confidence and healthy ambition. Some are in a position to do it voluntarily but a growing number are earning a modest but rewarding income from sports coaching and administration and this small army of grassroots coaches are the base to which a national sporting pyramid can be built.With a little imagination and loads of perseverance, a little oasis can emerge where once there was a barren urban nothingness. Despite the endless clich’s churned out about sport, it still does have that almost mythical ability to fill the existential void and help a souls earn a half decent living at the same time. I should know, I’m one.

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