A Delightful Day Talking About Football

Yesterday was a football day.
I had some conversations about Julian Zipparo and his Fantasy Football prowess.
I replied to some enquiries about blog posts about Charles Reep.
I joined a telephone conference with the Johnny Warren Foundation to discuss open learning possibilities. The Foundation:

• Creates a pathway to elite football so that young players living anywhere in Australia have the opportunity to have their talent and skills recognised and developed.
• Has dedicated programs and top level coaches will help keep the “best and brightest” in the game.
• Will open up avenues for the further development of women’s and girls’ football in Australia.
• Provides a substantial lift to the game through harnessing the vision of Johnny Warren in developing the Australian style of football.

I think there is a perfect fit between the aims of the Foundation and the goals of open access education.

Later in the day, Nehad (a Phd student at the University of Canberra) and I met with Alex and Ali from Football United. This organisation aims “to build capacity of communities and improve the skills of people in diverse areas that includes high proportions of refugee, migrant and Aboriginal Australian children, youth and families”. It does this by:

• Providing leadership development for youth and young adults empowering them as coaches and coordinators of Football programs.
• Implementing weekly football activities for children, planned and delivered by these coaches.
• Building extensive partnerships with local schools, Intensive English Centres, Migrant resource Centres, Football Clubs,PCYC’s, councils, businesses and community groups.
• Delivering ground breaking research into the benefits of using Football to improve social cohesion in urban regions.

I ended the day thinking about the memories these meetings evoked. I played football for the first time fifty-six years ago. The playfulness of this time pervades all my thinking about play, games and sport.