Street Soccer comes to Lincoln

The fight against anti social behaviour is being pushed by Lincoln City Council over the next six weeks, as they aim to get kids off the street and into playing soccer.

Street Soccer, a new scheme set up by the sports development team, aims to bring kids between the ages of seven and fourteen together to form their own mini teams.

Teams play against each other at the Sudbrooke Community Centre every Monday night. They are lead by two members of the development team.

Ollie Ezard, a coach with the team said of the night: “We asked the children really what they wanted, and they wanted to do some more football.”

He explained: “We came up with the idea of street soccer, which is basically just to engage them for an hour on a Monday night and to keep kids off the streets.”

The programme works by the teams gaining and loosing points depending on their performance in the games they play. But, they also loose or gain points depending on their behaviour on and off the pitch. 

At the end of the six week programme the team who has gained the most points will be named Street Soccer champions.

Street soccer pushes local kids to be interested in sport, as well as getting together with other children of their own age and to socialise, rather than just being sat in on a school night 

Ollie added: “We also run a scheme for kids aged 14-17, called fair play football. This is run in the North and South of the city, and is basically on the same format.”

“Eventually some of the kids involved in Street Soccer will move to this scheme at Yarborough when they are older.”