Competition-review series: Gap 1

Football Canada unveiled a series of recommendations to fill and improve upon eight gaps uncovered during a review of the competitive structure of football in Canada. The current step in the process is for the football community to review the recommendations and provide feedback.

We caught up with Football Canada technical coordinator, Aaron Geisler, a member of the competition review committee, to learn more about the proposed strategies. Over the coming weeks, we’ll break down each of the eight gaps. Today’s series looks at gap one – levels of play.

Other installments in the competition-review series: Gap 1     Gap 2       Gaps 3 & 4      Gaps 5 & 7      Gaps 6 & 8

One of the main elements of gap one is to keep players of a similar age competing against one another.

“Having no more than a two year developmental age gap [within a level of competition] is something we felt was critical in helping the development of football players in Canada,” explained Geisler. “This is especially true with younger players.”

“The developmental differences between players that are more than two years apart is significant and based on Long-Term Athlete Development (LTAD) principles, to foster the best environment for development, it’s best to keep them playing in separate levels.”

The strategy also calls for the standardization of levels of play and consistent naming of these levels across Canada.

“We found different parts of the country were calling the same age group by a different name. This causes confusion when trying to work on national strategies or various competitions as well as for players who move to a different part of the country or even between regions within the same province.”

We welcome your feedback

For more information about how to leave feedback as well as a full list of identified gaps and strategies, click here.

Strategies:

1-A Mandate: Standardize two year age categories and categories designation [2018]

1.B: Age categories (deleted)