OLDBURY PARK TIGERS FC

Oldbury Park Tigers Football Club

The Community Club for West Worcester and surrounding villages

Worcestershire Charter Development Club of 2008/09

Oldbury Park Tigers FC is a non-profit making, community football club, operating mini and youth soccer teams in Worcester.  We are based on the west side in St John’s and began operating from Oldbury Park Primary School, hence our name. We are ‘Tigers’ because that is what the first group of children wanted to be called.

Since 2001 we have grown from a few parents with an interest in providing some sport for our children to an FA Charter Development Club with eleven teams and over 140 children currently playing safe, organised league football.  We also run an open Development Centre on Sunday mornings, which can regularly attract up to 80 children.

Our Ethos

We firmly believe in the power of football to help develop ALL children in both sporting and social skills and also believe that growing our club by gaining local adult volunteers and developing them through providing recognised qualifications will ensure the work we do is sustainable.  In addition we work with the FA to provide qualifications for our older Youth team members so that they can also go on to coach or referee if they so wish.

Inevitably adult volunteers join our club as their children join and so we provide a resource that families can participate in together that improves fitness, provides qualifications and builds a community based upon a safe, fun and supportive environment for children to play football in.

Every child deserves the opportunity to take part and we encourage maximum participation by not operating any artificial bars to entry to our Sunday Development Centre.  We welcome all children regardless of their ability.  This is summed up in our motto, which can be found at the bottom of this letter.

Our Commitment to Quality

We fully support the Football Association (FA) in their efforts to raise the quality of football training in England and have successfully attained FA Charter Development Club status.  We ensure our team managers and assistant coaches are FA qualified and have Emergency First Aid and Child Protection qualifications as well as an enhanced CRB check.  We have codes of conduct for Club Officials, Players and Parents/Supporters and take our responsibilities to the children in our care very seriously. 

Above all, our aim is to provide a healthy and safe environment for children to develop their football and social skills. 

Our Volunteers

We have around 35 local volunteers with specific responsibilities and we ensure they are all trained at the clubs expense in FA Coaching, First Aid or Child Protection dependent upon their roles.  All volunteers with access to Children work in pairs and have enhanced CRB checks.

Our links to local Primary Schools

As a club firmly based in our local community we also operate School Club Links with our local primary schools supported by the Worcestershire Football Association (WFA).  These links provide ‘after school’ football training for primary school children over a six week programme.  In 2007 the quality of our planning and coaching was recognised nationally when we won the FA National Innovation award for our link with Dines Green Primary School.  At the end of each link we ensure that a teacher achieves the FA level 1 coaching award and also provide equipment to the school through our link with the WFA.  This helps ensure that the school can then improve its own provision for all of the children.  We also form an agreement with the school to use their pitches to become ‘grounds’ for our local mini soccer teams.