21st November

Girls Football

Having visited Sweden in March this year, Bernie Airlie, Head Coach of Girls Football (amongst many other roles) , came back with the information that the Swedes have girls making up around 20% of their club memberships. So, we have set this as a target for our club, which means growing our 50-odd girls to around 200!

In order to achieve this, I have been visiting Carolside Primary (P5/6) on Mondays, Netherlee Primary (P5) and Woodfarm High (S1) on Thursdays to offer free girls-only football either at lunchtime or after school in association with the Active Schools Co-ordinators. A club will start in Busby Primary from December on a Wednesday afternoon.

Woodfarm Co-ordinator, Marie Baxter, has already asked us to continue this programme for the Woodfarm cluster primary schools in January 2014. Hopefully the other schools/co-ordinators will take us up on this great offer so that we get as many girls as possible playing the game regularly!

Swedish Visitors

Two weekends ago, around 20 members of the Swedish/Stockholm FA and club representatives were over in Scotland visiting as part of an exchange programme between FAs. Scottish FA Club Development Officer Danny Bisland recommended that as well as visiting St Mirren the Swedish coaches check out our very own Soccer Centre.

On a cold, winter morning (apparently not as cold as in Sweden!) we guided our guests around the Soccer Centre, down to our building site in Eastwood Park and finally onward to our fantastically renovated pavilion at Norwood Playing Fields. The Swedes spoke about their clubs' setups and asked about our own before being treated to a drink, pie and sausage rolls, as well as the great hospitality of Jim and Alan Dobson- thanks guys!

European Connections

Giffnock SC Chairman Joe McKerns and the Football Development Officer (me) made the trip to visit the Town Twinning Association's Networking Meeting last weekend to promote the club, our International Football Festival 2014 and establish links with even more European football clubs. Joe presented to the committee and the local authority of Borken was sold on establishing links. We spent Saturday afternoon visiting a number of sports clubs in the area with the Sports Development Officer for the town. At the meeting were representatives from towns in Denmark, Sweden, Czech Republic, Germany and England.

This was a fantastic opportunity and the hospitality was exceptionally good- we're looking forward to the next meeting already!

More Awards

Following on from winning Best Community Club in Scotland 2013 and Giffnock SC Treasurer/Administrator/Soccer Centre Coach/Girls Football Head Coach/Committee member/everything in between, Bernie Airlie, winning West Region Volunteer of the Year 2013- Giffnock SC has also been well represented at this year's East Ren Council Awards.

The winners of these great awards are as follows:

Volunteer of the Year – Stewart Daniels

Young Persons Coach of the Year – George Milliken

Young Coach of the Year – Murray Donaghey

And Finally…

Giffnock SC are still looking for players form our Soccer Centre to get involved with our annual trip to the Konika Minolta Cup in ALbertslund, Denmark but spaces are filling up fast.

Our Club Committee minutes are now available on the website

Keep an eye on the facebook, twitter and website for details on the Soccer Centre as the cold weather starts to kick in and also the Mearns Castle exams make the indoor halls unavailable.

As always, please leave your comments and feedback in the section below, and thanks for reading.

Hello to everyone reading. I thought I'd be writing a monthly blog but with all the stuff going on in the club it's more like a week-and-a-halfly! So, here's the latest...

Halloween

Seeing as its Halloween on Thursday we'd like to encourage as many players (and coaches!) to come to training in costume as possible. Obviously there are restrictions to what you can move in but costumes can be worn to training and team photos done before removing for the football.

 

Stockholm FA visit to Scotland

Around 20 members of the Stockholm FA will be visiting Glasgow in the next fortnight and as part of this they wish to see how we run our Soccer Centre at Giffnock! The group of Swedish coaches will visit the Soccer Centre, which runs between 9-12 on Saturday at Mearns Castle (Newton Mearns), and look at how our club involves as many players as we do.

Coaches In-service

Our first Giffnock SC Coach In-service will take place on the 22nd of November and will be titled 'Tricks of the Trade'; aimed at giving the coaches at P1-4 some of the wee tips that make a session run smoother and maximise time spent coaching. I will be looking for Soccer Centre boys to participate as runners for this Friday night. Details to be confirmed.

Connor Daniels Level 1.3 Coaching in the Game

Connor Daniels (17) is a midfielder with the 1996 Thistle team and has been combining his st with coaching voluntarily with East Renfrewshire Football Development over the past 18 months. Connor will complete his Scottish FA Level 1.3 Coaching in the Game certificate this Sunday- making him one of the highest qualified coaches in the club- so I'd like to invite you all to join me in saying 'Congratulations' to Connor!

Connor will now be working as one of the lead coaches at the Girls U7 session at The Pitches (Pollokshaws) which is on every Sunday 11-12.

1996 captains

Ever wonder what's so great about playing for Giffnock SC? Well, James Lea (17, Mearns Castle High, left) and Paul McKerns (17, formerly of St Ninian's High, right) are the captains of the 1996 Thistle and Saltire teams respectively and also a coach at the club. The lads answer that question and some others in the first of our Giffnock SC Player Files which will be available on the club website.

 

Tournament #giffnockscfestival14

The Giffnock SC International Football Festival will be running for its third year this May, 24/25s from further afield- currently we have Danes, English, Irish and Scots attending. 

The official hashtag of the festival will be #GIFFNOCKSCFESTIVAL14 and I'd encourage you to use it in all social media messages/tweets/chats that you have so that we raise the profile of our great Festival.

Also, if you know of/have contact with any foreign sides please get in touch with me (george.milliken@hotmail.com) and I will pass this on to our tournament organising committee.

SecuriGroup will once again be our principal sponsor of the event.

Please do leave comments, your feedback is appreciated. Thanks!

Good afternoon and welcome to the latest edition of my Football Development blog for Giffnock SC- the biggest and best club in Scotland officially!

WELL, work has begun on our new 3G pitch at St Ninian's High School in Giffnock. This will be the home of the club from January and we hope to have as many of our 4s, 7s and younger 11s teams on here playing as much as possible. This pitch has been funded in part by Giffnock SC, East Renfrewshire Council and SportsScotland. Alongside our new home will be our changing facilities and clubhouse, funded in part by grants and assistance from the Scottish Football Partnership- this facility will be one of, if not , the first of its kind built in the country for growing clubs like ours. Massive thank you to all involved in getting these projects off the ground.

SO, with our little ones sorted- what about the big ones? Our refurbishment of the Norwood Pavilion is well underway with the kitchen and changing rooms just about complete- we are no able to offer visitors hot and cold food and drinks. These grass parks will shortly go under renovation work which will leave us with 3 top of the range grass parks by 2015. Norwood will then become the home of our older 11s teams, right through to our super Amateur team who are currently top of the West of Scotland League- well done lads!

www.facebook.com/GiffnockAmateurs

ALSO, I have been working closely with the Club Committee on putting plans in place about how we better develop all young players at the club- this involves coaching plans and coach development nights throughout the year. 14 of our 1996 boys (under19s) recently completed their Scottish FA Level 1 congratulations boys!

FINALLY, for this update-on top of all this coach recruitment and development I have been working with Bernie, Brendan and Pauline of the Girls section of the club about how we grow this area of the game.
We are hoping to get involved in local secondary schools to offer FREE girls-only football coaching by myself, a Scottish FA Licence holder, for all S1/2 girls at Mearns Castle, Williamwood, St Ninians and Woodfarm. On top of this I hope to get around primary schools in the Clarkston, Newton Mearns and Giffnock areas, offering the same program. So look out for flyers/newsletters in your daughter's school bag in the next few weeks!

Hello and welcome to my second post. Having finished my post-grad in Education I am now back to focussing on my role at Giffnock SC and hoping to get around loads of training sessions over the next fortnight- catching up with old faces and hoping to meet some more of the new ones.
This weekend saw the club participate in the Great Scottish Run again and special mention to 'kit-man' Alan Dobson, who does way more than make us look good, for once again organising and promoting our massive participation- over 200 runners on Saturday for the junior runs. The players who ran have raised loads for the Teenage Cancer Trust and I look forward to updating with an idea of the amount raised for this great charity.

Remember to follow us on twitter @giffnock_sc and like us on Facebook.

Thanks for reading.