The Football Fun Factory Podcast - Episode 1 - When should children join Football Academies?

Togetherness is the Word of the Week for our sessions at the Football Fun Factory. With the Olympics kicking off this week, what a brilliant word it is to showcase. The Olympics are all about ‘togetherness’ bringing people from different backgrounds, beliefs and countries all together, through the power of sport. At the Football Fun Factory, we aim to use the power of football to do the exact same thing. The togetherness that we see within our communities is truly incredible, and we love to witness the children at our sessions showcasing brilliant togetherness. This week at the sessions, we’ll be talking to the children about how they can showcase ‘togetherness’ throughout, and how they can also take what they learn at our sessions, and apply it to other parts of their lives, whether it’s at home or at school!

Should children play in different positions at a grassroots level? In the latest episode of the Football Fun Factory podcast, Luke and Jonny debate whether children should be playing in different positions each week, or whether they should just stick to one! With plenty of playing experience around the table (mainly through Luke) this episode gives a great insight into both sides of this debate.

The focus is on fun at the Football Fun Factory. This week, we’re making ‘Focus’ our Word of the Week.⁠ ⁠ We love to see children focused at our sessions, and we are able to keep them focused through creating a fun and engaging environment for them to enjoy their football within.⁠ ⁠ At our sessions this week, we’ll be asking the children what they think focus means, as well as how they can show it within our sessions this week.⁠ ⁠ In keeping with the spirit of ‘focus’ we’d love to focus on our Football Fun Factory podcast, created by founders James and Jonny! Each week they talk through our Word of the Week so that children can have a bit of insight about the Word of the Week, ahead of their sessions.⁠

It's been a celebration of football with the Euro’s running these last few weeks, so with the final this Sunday, it only seems right that we make Celebration our Word of the Week. It’s been great to see so many celebrations on the biggest stage of them all, but what we love to see is the celebrations within our community. At the FFF we love to see celebration on show in it’s most basic form after goals are being scored, but we also love to have a celebration of the children that make our programmes what they are. At the FFF at the end of every session, we celebrate children that showcase fantastic behaviours throughout our sessions, with our Blue Cards, and for our younger participants, we have a hand stamp to celebrate the end of a brilliant Tots session. We’re all about celebration at the FFF, and we can’t wait to hear what the children make of it as our Word of the Week this week!

Do England fans deserve more from the national team, or are people overreacting? Recorded on the eve of our final group game, the guys discussed the tournament so far, and whether as fans we need to leave it up to Southgate and trust in his judgement. A truly heated debate, which might leave listeners with more questions than answers!

Character is our Word of the Week for the upcoming week here at the Football Fun Factory.⁠ ⁠ At our sessions, we love to see children showcasing their characters and being themselves.⁠ ⁠ Whether it’s at our Tots Football Fun or Football Fun & Development sessions, creating an environment where every child can be themselves, and showcase their true character is so important to us.⁠ ⁠ This week at our sessions, we’ll be talking to the children about what character means, how they can showcase it, and also how they can be aware of other peoples character too!⁠

Humility is our word of the week at the Football Fun Factory, and it’s something we’ll be focussing on and talking about within all of our sessions! Humility is so important within football, but also every aspect of life. We’ll be teaching the children at this week's sessions about humility, why it is important and also how they can show humility themselves, both within our sessions but also at school and at home.

Is it right for children, or is it creating a high-pressure environment that's detrimental to children's development and love of football? Luke and Jonny debate tournaments in children's football, and whether there is a benefit to it. There's also plenty of Euro's chat mixed in, as Euro's fever takes over the FFF.

It's all about effort this week as we have made it our word of the week! This week we’ll be focussing on effort and how it’s so important to give and show effort in everything that we do. During our sessions this week, we’ll be asking the children to put in lots of effort so that they can really maximise their time with us. Putting in effort doesn’t just mean trying your hardest to score lots of goals! It can also be showcased in other ways like making an effort to give a warm welcome to new children at our sessions, or helping our coaches collect in footballs and cones. We’re sure that there’ll be some great effort on show from all the children this week.

Bravery is the word of the week at our sessions this week. There are so many different ways that children can show bravery within our sessions and this week we’ll be talking to the children all about how they can show bravery while playing football and then take this into everyday life. For many when they hear about bravery, they might think it’s all about perhaps getting hurt but being brave enough to continue on, while this is great, we’re actually going to be focussing on bravery as a way to achieve new things. This week we’ll be looking at how bravery can help children to try new things on the football pitch, make new friends and ultimately push them a little bit out of their comfort zone. Children can develop so much when they are outside their comfort zone, and through showing a little bit of bravery they’ll be able to do this at our sessions this week.