Susan Egelstaff is a six-time Scottish badminton champion and double Commonwealth Games bronze medallist who competed for Great Britain at the Olympic Games in London in 2012.
The Herald Sport columnist is now a mother-of-one who helps to run her young son’s Fun 5s football team at Cramond FC in Edinburgh.
She was unsurprised when she learned the Central Region FA had cancelled a Fun 4s tournament in Falkirk last month after a coach was headbutted on the sidelines and believes some adults need a reality check.
“What happened in Falkirk was outrageous but not a huge shock. I've never seen a punch-up or anything like that at the Fun 5s matches I’ve been at. But some people treat seven-year-olds playing football far, far too seriously. It is unbelievable.
“Fun 5s is supposed to be all about enjoyment and inclusion. The result doesn't matter. The kids keep the score amongst themselves during the game, but there's not any official record. That is supposed to make it fun.
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“If I'm taking a team I obviously try to tell the kids the stuff they should be trying to do. But if I'm just standing on the sidelines spectating I stay silent. I don’t even try to offer any encouragement because I feel shouting something would just be a distraction.
“It is tiny wee kids playing football. The chances of any of them making it at Premiership level are basically zero. So it should be about having fun. There are, though, definitely more than a few people who have forgotten that it is not about producing a professional footballer.
“If somebody is going to become good enough to become a professional footballer it won’t be because they got screamed at playing Fun 4s or Fun 5s. Sorry, but they don’t need to be told to track back when they're playing four-a-side. It is madness.
“I would never think like that. I've been involved in sport at a decent level in the past and realise that being good at seven has no bearing on whether you'll be good at 25.
“I'm not pushy at all because I know pushing kids hard at that young age is only going to make them turn away from the sport. But I can see why people do act like that. I've heard people at matches say, ‘There’s a Rangers scout here today!’ Clubs want to get kids in younger and younger to make sure they’ve got the boy or girl who is going to be the next big thing.
“Personally, I don't think kids need to be training with professional football clubs at six or seven. But I can understand why it makes an adult of a tiny kid say to them, ‘Hibs are here today so you’ve got to play well’.
“I realise how hard it is to make it in a sport. You need to have something within you, an internal drive. You're never going to get that from somebody else. You either have that or you don't. Nobody can drill it into you.
“To be perfectly honest, having been involved in top level sport there is a part of me that asks, ‘Do I really want my kid to become an elite athlete?’ There's certainly great things about it, but there's also a lot of really not great things.
“Eilish McColgan only specialised in athletics when she was well into her teens. Her mum Liz was a world champion runner and she knew that getting too serious too young was wrong for her daughter. That approach helped to make Eilish a far more rounded athlete and a far more rounded person.
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“I was pretty good pretty young. I got to the final of senior Scottish Championship when I was 14. I was playing against adults. But I was a teenager before my badminton got semi-serious. I was allowed to go at my own pace.
“But it was a different time and a different sport. There was nothing like the money in badminton that there is in football. There is a mad scramble among football clubs to get kids in now. They are just terrified of missing a special talent. Parents in turn are scared their kids miss out.
“The problem is that people see that Tiger Woods or David Beckham being pushed hard as kids paid off. They forget about the other kids, and there are literally millions of them, who were also treated like that and didn't make it.
“If you make a seven-year-old play football obsessively every night of the week it puts unbearable and unnecessary pressure on them.
“Coaches and parents are taking kiddies’ football far too seriously. These Fun 4s and Fun 5s games aren’t great spectacles. It is supposed to be a laugh. Occasionally you get the odd good wee player. But it is definitely not the beautiful game you are watching. On the pitch or on the sidelines.”
