Dartford Grassroots Youth Football Lead Darren Corley’s monthly round-up of the grassroots side of the club

Another busy month for our grassroots teams, with our Under-8s, 9s, 10s and 11s in the A Leagues during October. This is the highest level they can reach and we have other youth sides very close to getting there, too. 

On the women’s side, the Under-13s JPL team are second in their league and have started really well. 

Despite the good month, we didn’t just want these updates to be around results and performances on the pitch. We wanted to highlight some of the fantastic grassroots staff we have who make these results possible. 

This month we wanted to highlight the work of Warren Ball. 

Warren is the club’s safeguarding officer. Every club must have one and his job is to make sure everyone; players, visitors and staff, are all as safe as possible and that the children are learning and developing in the right environment. Any issues in the youth section regarding safety, people go to him. 

He has been a volunteer for a number of years now. He helps with the new coaches and has been doing the Mini-Darts/Mini-League and running the Under-16s for as long as I can remember. 

His Under-16 boys are going from strength-to-strength with a hope most of them will join Ben Greenhalgh in the post-16 Academy. 

The Mini-Darts is the lifeblood of our club, helping nurture our younger players. They will play every week with Warren and he will help to develop them, with some of them becoming part of our Under-7s team. 

He is basically Mr Dartford at the moment. He works with the Under-7s and 16s and helps out on match-days with mascots and the flag waving. The kids have had a great experience with that this year. 

We are a three-star accredited youth section by the FA. There aren’t many clubs in Kent our size with a three-star accreditation and we have been for the last several years. 

It’s a massive achievement, but one that has come as an expectation at Dartford. But it wouldn’t be possible without Warren. 

He also has to make sure coaches have up-to-date DBSs and is fit to be a Dartford coach. We take safeguarding very seriously here at Dartford and Warren is a big reason as to why we are so successful at ensuring this. 

Without people like Warren, the youth section just wouldn’t be the success it is. He’s at the club twice a week for training, every Saturday for Mini-Darts, first-team matchdays for our flag waving and mascots and on Sundays where he works with the older children. And that doesn’t include the safeguarding role, which really is a full-time gig. 

Any advice or guidance he can give he is happy to do so and he dedicates so much time to Dartford Football Club. 

He is one of the people who makes the club the community club that it is.

By Riley Finch

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