As strong winds and torrential rain batter the UK, we enjoy again another wet and dreary winter. Long gone are the visions of a white and frosty Christmas so often played out in annual offerings from Hollywood.

But then that’s really the traditional view isn't it? Turkey and all the trimmings and, in our house especially, the only time of the year that we endure Brussels sprouts!

Also over the festive period we have our sport, football and rugby at home and a good Test Match somewhere warm and inviting, truly spoilt for choice and for most of us, our first trip outside after the Christmas Day festivities is the Boxing Day fixture which for many is the first game we look for when they are released.

Placing tradition to one side though, are we in danger of falling further and further behind in the development of our national game?

When the Premier League started way back in the early 90s, the percentage of English players sat at an impressive 69 per cent. In the 2014/15 season this had fallen to 35 per cent and at the start of the current campaign dropped again to 33 per cent.

It’s easy to blame the money of the Premier League, indeed it could be argued that part of the soul of the game has been sold to finance its epic growth but then the clubs require – no, demand - that the quality needed to compete at the highest level is on their field and in their squad. Quality players simply are not being delivered from the youth systems and grass roots, in fact the level of quality in sufficient numbers is falling at an alarming rate.

Why though? Well we can blame coaching standards – generally speaking these are lower than on continental Europe and we certainly have a lot less qualified to the same level but there must be more to it than that!

The demand for instant success more often than not tends to dictate the clubs thinking and actions away from emerging talent, especially when that talent is so poor but then it can be difficult to work wonders when the source material is so bad!

Part of the problem lies in our approach to the ‘grass roots’, the youth leagues up and down the country and the many young boys and girls that take part and sits, in part, with our insistence on the traditional set up of our Football League season.

In parts of the North West, some of the youth leagues haven’t played since late November. In Cambridgeshire where I find myself these days I watched an U14 match on Sunday on a pitch that resembled a half-flooded beach.

I asked one of the coaches what benefit they could possibly get from playing on a ‘field’ where the ball simply refused to roll – his response, they were so far behind on their fixtures, they simply had to play otherwise the season would be wiped out.

Up and down the country we are faced with the same situation, the FA has conducted surveys of youngsters and the results are both startling and worrying:

“Players with access to better quality pitches would like to play 25 per cent more often than currently, while those playing on poorly-maintained pitches are likely to reduce the amount they play next season.”

The number of youngsters playing at any level has been dropping consistently for a few years now and although still enormously popular, the frustration around the quality of playing surfaces is having an effect.

So how is this fixed? The FA have finally got on board with the drive towards the 3G pitches, those of us that remember the plastic pitches of the 80s will recoil in horror as we recollect the spin and bounce, the burn marks after a sliding tackle and countless knee injuries.

These new 3G pitches though are entirely different and many other sports (such as rugby) have used them to great effect. Reports indicate that the ball acts as if it was on normal grass and injuries are no more or less than traditional playing surfaces.

In fact over on the continent, they have been at the forefront of the drive towards the 3G and 4G pitches where in Germany alone they currently have more than 4,000 in active use across all levels of football. Here in England, just under 750.

Help is at hand though, the FA, in a move that would make any government spin doctor proud, announced more than £260m worth of investment into improving the game at grass roots level…(whilst quietly whispering it was to be paid for through redundancies in key areas of development). This investment will include the introduction of six regional hubs that will have 3G pitches taking England to a grand total of 1,000.

It’s a step in the right direction, albeit a small one but one that has slipped through almost unnoticed and on its own won’t really make any lasting changes to the lack of available talent syphoned into the professional game. Whilst we are still very much out of balance when it comes to playing surfaces, especially in our region we need a more sustainable plan.

The winter break! Maybe not at the top level (although there is a separate discussion to be had based on the amount of injuries we currently see) but certainly at the lower levels and definitely in our Sunday youth leagues.

It’s time to break from tradition, give the kids a break by reducing the amount of competitive games and a rest over winter. The opportunities for the pitches to be maintained and even recover to a half decent condition will invariably allow proper football to be learned and played.

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