Tournament blog

Here and now

Hi, my name is Jon Dutton and I have been appointed by The FA to act as Tournament Director for the event.

Over the next few months I am going to blog with a view to giving you an insight into the organisation and operation of the event.

Firstly I just wanted to tell you a little about me. I work for a company called Logistique and we are really proud to have been selected to event manage what we hope will be a magnificent event in August. We are a team that has lots of experience of delivering elite disability football events. Whilst our base is in Salford myself and my colleagues Stephen and Phil are temporary residents of Hereford due to the time we have been spending in the City.

As we stand now in early February we are still some 26 weeks or so away from ‘D’ day. Despite that preparations are well advanced.

One of the main challenges we have is to turn the existing pitch at The Royal National College into a world class venue befitting of a major event. This has meant spending lots of time working with external contactors to put together a temporary build plan – rather boring in the detail but the headlines are that it is going to look very special.

This coming weekend we have an official inspection from the International Governing Body – IBSA. In trying to explain who are IBSA the easiest translation is to say that they are the FIFA of Blind football. The governance of all disability sport is a complex matter that I will save for others to debate and understand!

So we are looking forward to showing IBSA our plans, warts and all!

Along with the inspection this weekend is a busy one. We have a select group of referees taking part in a seminar on Blind football. We are flying a specialist over from Greece to give the referees expert tuition with a view to some of them taking part and officiating in the World Championships. As Blind football is only one of two Paralympic football disciplines it also give successful referees a pathway to go and officiate in the Paralympics. 2012 might be too soon – but here’s hoping.

All of the referees must be true romantics (unlike me) as the seminar runs through to late on Sunday, Valentines Day! I have already had lots of stick about the scheduling from them!

Finally the England squad are also having a squad training session this weekend. It’s difficult to try and explain how inspiring it is to watch them in action without sounding condensing. When I watched them late last year I tried to imagine what it would be like just to live a normal life with no sight without even thinking about kicking a football about with such skill. It didn’t take me long conclude that the players are dedicated, talented athletes and their impairment doesn’t impede them living their dream.

Posted by Jon Dutton on 10-02-2010

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