Relocation of Redhill Outlet

Dear Customers,

Please note the relocation address for our Redhill Outlet with effect from 8 June 2013.

Our new address is:
Blk 57, Dawson Road
#01-11A, Dawson Place
Singapore 142057
Tel: 64753922

Buses nearby: 33,51,64,111,120,139,145,186,970

From Queenstown MRT: Buses 51, 111, 186, 970 towards direction of Redhill Station

From Redhill MRT: Buses 33, 64 towards the direction of Queenstown Station.

Talks.

The talking's never over.

Pitching in to Support the School Sport Survey

The Football Association of Wales is the governing body of football in Wales and, in addition to its administration responsibilities for football, has the responsibility of running the international teams. Alongside the FAW, the Welsh Football Trust (WFT) is the charitable organisation responsible for developing the grassroots game, including working with coaches and volunteers and increasing opportunities for young players to play and improve.

Here, FAW Research and Evaluation Officer Llŷr Roberts, and the WFT’s Operations Manager Kevin Moon describe how the School Sport Survey can make a difference for Welsh football.

There are many different elements to our work but ultimately we want Wales to become a more successful football nation at grassroots and international level.

Among our high level targets are for Wales to achieve a Seven Star Rating for the UEFA Grass Roots Charter, and to qualify for major international tournaments.

Football is by far the most watch and played sport in the country but, to keep it that way and continue to grow and improve, we need to have a picture of the participation and views of the people who we want to play and enjoy the game.

At a grassroots level, the Sport Wales School Sport Survey gives us a valuable suite of data that we can use as evidence and background to guide our work and target our resources.

Using the data from 2011, we wanted to establish baseline figures of both club membership and also wider participation in football. We have information relating to club membership but needed assistance in obtaining indicators of informal participation so that we know exactly what types of footballing opportunities young people are taking part in.

We have been working with Data Unit Wales to undertake initial research and recommendations, but the School Sport Survey provides both membership and participation data and prevents duplication of work.

We will also be using School Sport Survey as the data source for our annual reporting and making use of the forthcoming adult survey data for the senior game.

The term ‘school’ in the title of the survey masks how much pupils filling in the questionnaire can influence how the game of football in Wales is planned. That is why we would urge schools to complete the survey and ensure that all of us working in sport have the knowledge and information to provide the best possible opportunities we can.

Llŷr Roberts and Kevin Moon.

For more information on the Sport Wales School Sport Survey visit www.schoolsportsurvey.org.uk.

Perpetual Motion: The Language of Movement in Football

   Tune into the soon-to-be-defunct ESPN Classic on any quiet evening and you'll notice very quickly just how slow football used to be. Any hint of panic would instantly be remedied with a prod of the ball back into the grateful hands of a goalkeeper, who would punt the ball downfield at his leisure towards a lumbering no.9 (a proper old fashioned one, of course, rather than the modern, false variety). 

   Then, in 1992, football's Big Bang occurred. A dull, cynical World Cup two years earlier had the game's lawmakers heading for the drawing board. It would be fascinating to discover the ideas that never made it onto the pitch, but the result of this enforced introspection was the single most important development in modern football history - the back-pass rule. Outlawing the handling of a deliberate pass to the goalkeeper made with the boot (amended in 1997 to also include throw-ins), the new directive transformed the dynamic of matches overnight, and followed the claim by FIFA's then General Secretary, Sepp Blatter, that "spectators do not go to football matches simply to see the goalkeeper standing still with the ball in his hands".

Ronaldo - no slouch. Although quite possibly now a slouch.

   Over two decades later, the game is - with some notable Latin-country exceptions - overrun by players built like super middleweight boxers, possessing the pace of 100-metre Olympians and breathing with the respiratory capacity of a varsity rowing crew.

   For all the appreciation of skill and metronomic possession-hoarding, football is still a sucker for pace in any form - searing, lightning, blistering and explosive pace (often "to burn"); bags of pace or pace in abundance; and the curious concepts of real or genuine pace, suggesting that some players might be carrying counterfeit (or perhaps deceptive) pace. This perpetual motion has forced the football media to consult their thesauruses to find more nuanced ways of describing how a player propelled himself from A to B before he troubled Row Z.

   The wide areas of the pitch are the logical place to start, where jet-heeled wingers aim to give opposing full-backs as torrid a time as possible. They may find, however, that their adversary is no slouch and he himself may need no invitation to bomb on. The historically undersung full-back has been liberated by the era of gung ho-ism that the back-pass rule ushered in - they are now free to buccaneer, maraud or swashbuckle to their lungs' content, provided they are just as good going the other way. Insipid games, conspicuous by their lack of dynamism, require pace to be injected into them, something that has so far escaped the suspicious eye of sport's doping authorities.

A provisional licence to roam.

   In amongst the power and bustle, diminutive players must jink and slalom their way to success, although the mazy run remains available to players of any dimension. Graceful playmakers are said to glide across the turf, while defensive midfield dogsbodies merely scuttle, allowing their more attack-minded colleagues to apply for the coveted licence to roam. Space exists only to be burst into, front posts are always darted towards, while the back stick is the best place to indulge in a spot of ghosting in. 

   It's not all high-velocity stuff, however. Trudging (often unrepentantly so) is the frequent exit strategy of choice for red-carded players, while nosebleed-defying centre-halves tend to amble forward for set-pieces. An injured player's movement is always closely monitored by TV co-commentators, who keep us updated on his freedom movement on a scale ranging from "gingerly" to "moving a bit more freely now".

   We have a lot to thank the back-pass rule for in creating a more dynamic sport, but spare a thought for the poor goalkeepers who have been scampering, backpedalling and on-rushing their way out of their comfort zones - and often into no man's land - ever since 1992. 

Peter Drew on why the School Sport Survey is hugely important to Tennis Wales.

 

 Peter Drew, CEO Tennis Wales

 

Introducing tennis to children at school is probably the most important part of Tennis Wales’ 2020 Vision Plan to grow the game.  Tennis Wales is aiming to double tennis participation over the next few years and introducing children to tennis at school is a very important part of that objective.  We want every child in Wales to have the opportunity to be introduced to tennis when they are at school and the School Sport Survey helps us greatly to understand how successful we are being with that, and helps us to identify where the gaps are and where we need to be better at that. 

The data that we got from the 2011 School Sport Survey was extremely useful to us when we came to develop our 2020 Vision Plan in 2012.  Some of the key themes that we saw from the data were that 60% of Primary Schools provided tennis, 53% of Secondary Schools provided tennis, and 40% of children Year 3 to 6 played tennis.  This is very valuable information for us because by 2020 we want all of these numbers to be as close to 100% as possible.  The 2013 survey will help us to know how successful our current strategies are for trying to achieve this.  The 2011 data also showed several other very interesting and useful trends for us.  It showed us that at Primary School there are roughly equal numbers of boys and girls playing tennis, but at Secondary School there is a significant drop-off in girls relative to boys.  As a result of this we have now introduced two new programmes aimed at retaining and attracting more teenage girls to tennis.  The 2011 data also showed us that there was a big increase in school tennis participation in 2009 coinciding with a big push in the schools tennis programme the year before when a lot of our current schools tennis initiatives were launched.  We also saw that there is a really huge latent demand for children at school who would like to play more tennis.  Tennis has one of the highest levels of latent demand in school children out of all the sports in Wales.  So this means we know that investing significant resources into our schools tennis programme is going to have a big impact on tennis participation.  This is very valuable information both for Tennis Wales and for its other funding partners, namely Sport Wales and the Tennis Foundation.  From this data Tennis Wales, Sport Wales, and the Tennis Foundation can all be very confident that investing resources into schools tennis in Wales is going to have a very positive impact on getting every child in Wales hooked on sport.

 Tennis Wales is increasingly using a very focussed, evidence based approach to developing and implementing its strategies, and determining where to prioritise its resources. The School Sport Survey is absolutely critical for this purpose and is one of our most useful strategic tools.

Professor Laura McAllister talks Conference 2013

I’m very excited to announce that our Annual Conference will be held on Monday 17 June at Cardiff City Stadium.

Designed to unite key stakeholders from across sectors for one day to discuss, debate and identify practical ways to deliver our shared agenda, it’s a crucial event in the Sport Wales diary in ensuring that we remain a strong and united sporting nation.

It’s a great opportunity to reach out to different sectors who may be able to use the influence of sport to their advantage – I believe in a multi-agency, multi-partner approach to creating a more active, healthy and confident population. Whether it’s across local authority departments, sectors such as health and education and even in business, we all have a responsibility to shape the future for our next generation.

The programme for this year reflects this view and will focus on a theme of leadership and legacy - we have invited leading professionals from inside and outside of the sector to stimulate important debates and discussions.

As part of the programme, we are thrilled to welcome Lord Sebastian Coe to the stage - not only one of the world’s greatest ever athletes, he also helped lead the way in exceeding our expectations for London 2012. It will be interesting to hear his thoughts on how we can strengthen the connections between the work at UK and home nation level to build on the success of the Olympics and Paralympics to keep the momentum going as we look towards Glasgow 2014.

We also welcome John Griffiths AM – his debut as Minister for Culture and Sport. I know that John is someone who has a personal love of sport and exercise, but more than that I know he will bring a drive and enthusiasm to the clear direction we have set out for the sports sector in Wales. I look forward to hearing his address.

We’ve had a record-breaking year for Wales and for GB sport with the national rugby side defending their RBS 6 Nations crown, Cardiff City FC lifting the Championship trophy, Swansea City winning the League Cup, Becky James winning two cycling World medals and a host of other successes.

This means that more than ever we need to be challenging the sector. I’m very proud of what we in Wales have achieved as a nation but we can always push ourselves further – the conference has an important role to play in this.

This is an event not to be missed - I urge those who have received an invitation to make sure they attend. The day is an undeniably important opportunity to drive sport forward in Wales.

Pseudoscience: All Filler, No Killer

Visualised: 57 years of FA Cup Final pre-match build-up. That's two-hundred and eighty-two hours and forty-five minutes of talking about how magnificent Wembley's hallowed turf is, foreign players claiming to have watched finals while crowded round a small TV in their village, and painfully shy 5-year-old being asked for their score prediction.