Registering Your Team and Players
Club membership and fees
Every player on your team needs to be a member of the club to be allowed to take part in training sessions and matches. The membership fee covers all training costs and match fees during the season (September - May), a kit for each child and league registration fees.
Signing up and paying can be done by parents online by visiting this link: https://langtongreencsa.org.uk/membership
We do offer assistance with membership fees on an individual basis to families whose circumstances mean the cost would be a struggle at this moment in time. Please contact Chris Allen on [email protected] for more information on this.
Playing in a League
From U7s upwards, to play matches against teams from other clubs, your team (and players) need to be registered with one of the local leagues. They will organise matches for you, which will be published in advance on the league website.
Before U12, matches are non-competitive (U11s have short competitive trophy events), which means there are no published results.
The majority of our teams (including all our U7, U8 and U9 teams) play in the Crowborough and District Junior Football League (CDJFL), simply because it's by far the most local league. From U10s upwards there are opportunities for our stronger teams to play in various other leagues, where there is a bit more travel but a higher general standard of opposition, culminating in our very strongest teams from U13 upwards playing in the Kent Youth League - the highest standard of Sunday grassroots football in the county. At the same time, we continue to offer football to all abilities in all age groups, regardless of the level our best players are competing at. The club ethos is very much about football for all.
Crowborough League Registration
So if you want your team to play matches against other clubs, you'll need to get yourselves registered with a league. To keep it simple, we'll just cover Crowborough League here. The registration is handled in two parts:
Team Registration: the club handles all the team registrations together online - simply tell Chris Allen what your team name and age group for next season is and whether you have any specific requests regarding strength of division you would like to be placed in (please be realistic - the leagues will not take us seriously in future requests if we ask for something that ends up with 12-0 results every week). This needs to be done by your league's team entry date, which is usually the last day in May.
Player Registration: this is done via the FA Whole Game System. Each player requires a photo and various other parental / child information. Speak to Chris A about this.
If you need to register other players throughout the season, this can be done, but you need confirmation the registration has been processed before you can play them in matches or you risk fines and losing any points you may have got for winning or drawing the game. There is usually a cut off date for registering players, some time in February, to avoid teams bringing in "ringers" for the last few games of the season to win a league or cup.
Paired Teams
In the Crowborough League in the younger age groups (U10 and below), each team is paired with another team from the same club. Both teams travel to matches together and play 2 paired teams from another club. This means each team gets 2 x matches on any one Saturday.
For example Langton Green may have 2 paired teams at U8 (let's call them Lions and Leopards), who travel to play against Foresters Sharks and Wolves. Each Langton Green team would play each Foresters team, so both sides from each club get two matches. So the fixtures for that particular morning would be:
- Langton Lions vs Foresters Sharks (pitch 1)
- Langton Leopards vs Foresters Wolves (pitch 2)
- Langton Lions vs Foresters Wolves (pitch 1)
- Langton Leopards vs Foresters Sharks (pitch 2)
Length of games varies from age group to age group (older age groups play longer matches).
In the event of us entering an odd number of teams in an age group, a team may be left on their own (unlikely) or be paired with a single team from another local club to maintain the format of 2 matches for everyone.
If both from our club, the 2 paired teams should be set up to be of roughly even ability level. If results suggest otherwise, the league will intervene and ask that changes be made to ensure no large difference. This is so each pair can be matched for future fixtures against other pairs of teams of a similar ability level, so having all the best players in one team doesn't help that system work. Worth considering when selecting your squads.