Record Breaking numbers as GADYFL Restarts!

There is a strong partnership that has been developed over many years with the Glasgow and District Youth Football League and ourselves as Glasgow Sport Football Development. This has resulted in the record amount of 4v4 teams playing within the league registering this year totalling 85, to put this into some context, each team will bring, on average, 6 players which totals a remarkable 510 players playing every week at Toryglen Football Centre.

Every week, the partnership allows over 500 young players to start their footballing journey, the partnership allows 100's of volunteer coaches to provide a safe, fun, positive environment for everyone who falls in love with the beautiful game.

At the start of each season, pre covid, we looked to deliver a player pathway night to all coaches of the teams as they progress in their journey through the player pathway transitioning from 5 a side to 7 a side for example. In addition to this we support many of the clubs throughout Glasgow who's teams also participate within the GDYL.

Through our support mechanisms that we offer as a football development department we regularly try and support all grassroot clubs by offering an inservice to the clubs and teams/ coaches that are perhaps new to coaching to give them some hints and tips during in service that can be accredited as part of their CCD hours to keep their coaching qualifications up to date

The reaction from the league committee has been an extremely pleasing one, to see so many kids starting their footballing journey is an incredible sight to see and the other pleasing part of this is to see so many coaches volunteer and give up their time for hours and seeing how passionate they get about their team – there's something just very pleasing about seeing them all develop.

I would strongly encourage anyone who works in sports to take a trip, on a Sunday morning down to Toryglen football centre where they will see children in their 1000's play the game they love with a smile on their face and remind us all, the reason we chose to work in sport.