North Lanarkshire Council

A street football programme for youngsters from across North Lanarkshire reached a tremendous conclusion on Friday 7 August with a high profile finals day at Broadwood Stadium in Cumbernauld.

Motherwell Football Club captain Stephen Craigan, the Champions League theme tune and the Sky Sports cameras were all on hand to generate excitement for the event which helped to tackle youth disorder problems.

The Street Football programme organised by North Lanarkshire Council has been a project almost a year and a half in the making and has reached over 1,000 youths and young children. Just before the summer, £20,000 of funding was secured from the Community Safety Partnership to run the programme for youths in North Lanarkshire over the summer period.

The council identified local communities where youth disorder was a problem. One of the main issue for youths was they could rarely venture out their own community for the fear of gangs from other areas. So with the use of the mobile football pitch and newly acquired 4 a side goals, and the help of the Police and local re-generation managers we identified community 'Hotspots' with a high rate of youth disorder.

The programme involved 4-a-side games which encouraged players to show off their creative skills and learn to communicate and play together as a team. All these coaching days were delivered on the days and times where youth disorder was at its highest, usually Friday nights between 6pm – 9pm.

One of the key co-ordinators of the programme is Willie McNab, an Assistant Development Officer with Learning and Leisure services and a youth coach with Celtic FC. Willie said: "The programme is a unique event with communities from all over North Lanarkshire coming together with football being used as the vehicle to make this happen.

"Hopefully this will provide us with a platform to build on the success of the programme and we will be trying hard to secure funding to make this a more sustainable event, giving the youth of today and tomorrow the chance to play and maybe find a career in the world of football."