With a parade of twenty one countries, a stream of party poppers and an array of football anthems, the five hundred plus competitors from local Woking primary schools began a momentous day at the Churchill World Cup 7’s, held at The Winston Churchill School.
The festival, which was planned and lead by the schools seventy eight Junior Football Organisers and assisted by forty year 10 officials, was hailed as the biggest and best ever organized by the school. The primary pupils were lead and coached all day by the JFO’s who all came in for high praise from Head of PE Richie Emerson, “I am so proud of all of them, it is a logistical nightmare having approximately nine hundred people up at the school for one event and for them to organize and run it so smoothly is a testament to their ability, I have been inundated with compliments from teachers and parents”. Twelve teams have qualified for the second phase to be held on April 25th, with the World Cup Final being held at Woking FC on 3rd May.
Date 23rd March 2006
Event JFO World Cup Churchill 7’s Festival
Held at The Winston Churchill School- Woking
Participants: 550 year 5 & 6 pupils from the Woking District partnership
135 FA JFO’s from Year 11 & 10
Estimated number of people at the festival 900
Partners: Surrey FA, Woking FC, Woking Primary Schools, Winston Churchill school sport partnership (includes 5 secondary schools), St John’s Ambulance, Woking Borough Council
Theme of festival: All schools were given a country from the qualified world cup teams. Each school was asked to research their country and produce flags, banners and kits for the festival.
Itinerary of the day: Festival was opened by a JFO and was preceded by a parade of the countries to display their flags team identity. Teams were then coached and lead by JFO’s for 45 minute session. Then the festival went into the six pool leagues. The year 11’s coached and looked after their teams all day with the year 10’s officiating, scoring & doing refreshments. At the end of the day there was a closing ceremony and all teams received participation certificates. The top two teams qualified for the second phase to be held on April 25th with the World Cup Final being played at Woking FC on May 3rd.
Post festival activities: JFO evaluations, School evaluations
Future plans: 10 JFO’s to go to Kenya to deliver a festival and coach pupils, give equipment to our partner school. To double the size of the festival to 160 teams from 60 schools, with JFO’s from 10 partner secondary schools