Share and share alike?
09 Dec 2011

A personal view -
What a nice thought in an ideal World, a full squad of 14 players with everyone getting an equal time on the pitch and all players, parents and management team going home with massive smiles on their faces no matter how well they played or what the score was.
 In the real World, there will always be a mixture of skills, passions and motivations. Should such a rule be enforced, a number of changes, that already happen to a small degree, would gradually become much more apparent:
 Imagine a scenario with the junior team that you are most familiar with, where the manager conforms to this new directive and decides to give all of his squad of mixed ability players an equal amount of time on the pitch (don't forget to include the goalkeeper!).
 A few games down the line, the mood on the pitch and on the sidelines begins to change because results are not as good as they were and the quality of football has deteriorated because players are having to play in unfamiliar positions to ensure time-sharing rules are adhered to (who is going to enforce the rule anyway?).
 The manager now has a bit of a problem on his hands as unity on the pitch seems to be dropping with players grumbling between themselves and parents muttering on the sidelines. The manager is aware that the majority of people at the game want to see their team do well and the reason he signed everyone in his squad was to introduce the newer players gradually with some match experience wherever possible, to give them the incentive to try to close the gap on the more experienced players. The less experienced players are now under much greater pressure all of a sudden and they seem less happy. 
 In my opinion, within a few seasons, the geographical make up of teams, size of squads and difference in quality between the best and the worst teams would change dramatically. Managers would no longer sign-on new players with potential unless they were good enough to fit straight into their teams and will only take the minimum amount of substitutes to each match so their best players can stay on the field for longer. You may even find some teams playing the better teams with no subs at all, risking players playing on with injuries and risking longer term damage. Those teams that decide to play with the bigger squads in the spirit of the rule, will in the majority of cases, see their better players move to stronger teams where they feel can be more successful. The team then lose even more games, parents lose commitment and stop coming to watch their kids play, players get bored of losing and take up other passtimes, the manager gets more and more frustrated with everything and leaves. Watch the league tables over the next couple of seasons and see which teams drop out. The future would see the same thing happen in much greater numbers. The result would be an elite Junior Premier League with fewer places for 'the rest' to enjoy their football. 
 Most humans perform best when they have targets to aim for, having a guaranteed amount of time on the pitch will also lead to poorer individual performances throughout the spectrum of a team. 
 For anyone thinking they should make junior football less competitive... The only way that you will ever do that is literally to take away the goals... and that's just not Football !!!!

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Andy H.  (personal opinion only)
westhaven10a@talktalk.net