Just a friendly warning to suggest you check out the eligibility rules before blooding the YTS this year. Its based on age each September - ie current "Year 11s" are ineligible until next season.

And before anyone moans at me, this is an FA rule (possibly even FIFA?).

This is very confusing. I thought you'd told me last season that they had to be in 6th form (or that year of schooling). However, speaking to Chris Day a few weeks ago, he assured me that the FA rule is that you need to be 16 as that is "of 6th form age". I know it's one person against another, but my experience of Chris is that he knows FA rules. But then Ben generally knows his stuff too.

When you turn 16 makes sense to me as you could turn 16 on 31st August, and be in 6th form a few days later when term starts. However, if you turned 16 the day after, you'd be in year 11, so would have to wait an entire season to play???

A quick search on Google has been semi-useful. Can't find anything from the official FA site. The FAW (of which I'm sure Ben is a big fan) does state that a player is eligible to play adult football from their 16th birthday, and I found a couple of other links from local football leagues also stating this. I didn't find anything about players needing to be of year 12 age to play adult football though.

As Chris has proven, I'd have thought the rule would state that a player must be 16 years old or older. Couldn't see it being related to their school year, or how would international transfers for 16 year olds work, as school years/terms/structure differs country to country.

Still, good job pointing it out Ben.

Looks like we'll be ok for the friendly then. Quite looking forward to seeing the YTS play amongst our usual kids.

A referee who I knew very well when I lived in London, is still reffing, Doug is 90. Those of us in the MOD who know him see him once a year at our sports day and wish that should we reach that age we will look as fit as he does.


Christopher