We wish Dave farewell during his stay in Wales & hope he finds as good a bunch of lads to play withdrawn in Swansea.
What a super  photo this is. You can tell who are the professionals by their folded arms! 

   A total of 45 sessions were held over the year. We lost 4 sessions as the Bank Holidays fall on Mondays, and one was lost owing to insufficient numbers during England's progress in the European Championships.
   Average weekly attendance was over 11 [in the range 7 to 15]. 
The Top Ten attendees were
  1.   Adrian                                  44  [only 1 missed session]
  2.   Steve & Ron                        42
  3.  Nigel & Michael F                40
  4.  Alan                                       36
  5.  Pete                                       34
  6.  Micheal D & Wendell          33
  7.  Dave N                                  29
  8.  Paul                                       28
  9.  Bill                                         25
 10. John C                                   24
 11. Dave W                                 23
 12.  Matt                                     21

A total of £1,623 was collected, so after paying for the hall hire, £243 ​was given to Birmingham Age UK
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Despite all the manoeuvring between the FA, WFU & WFA, I think people would like to see this report.
OK, there's quite a bit of running, and the concept of the one-step penalty has yet to be learnt.
Nevertheless a good little video. 

Finally released on Monday 8 October 2018, which the FA hope "will create unity across the game and breed growth across the format.

​Click on the links for a Summary by the FA, and for the PDF file of the revised Laws.

For the moment we shall not be changing our modified "Harborne Rules".

Long time since I’ve posted. The co.uk website has been down & unavailable for a while. It’s now been rebranded as wfcharborne.com. I think if you search for the old co.uk site you will get redirected to the new site.

So.... what’s been happening in the intervening period.

For start there’s been all the fun and games between the WFU & the WFA, the latter unilaterally declaring themselves to be the National Governing Body for Walking Football, setting in place an English National WFA team and arranging Internstipndl matches.

For those interested in the political to & fro, and individual characters I leave you to look at the WFU & WFA websites, and the forum on the walkingfootball.com site.
The FA themselves were merely biding their time and have recently introduced their ‘ Stepping Out’ strategy.

Today sees a significant development as the FA release their long awaited version of "The Rules" 
It's a little early to comment on them, and I'll probably leave that to the WF commentators out there in Social Media Land. Of course they are primarily designed for the FA's own Peoples Cup Competition.
This is what the FA say....

 "         The official Laws of the Game for Walking Football have now been launched.The game, a slower paced version of the sport which is accessible to all regardless of age, health and ability, has experienced a strong organic growth in recent years and has acted as the catalyst in attracting many people back into football due to its various health and fitness benefits and a strong sense of fun and enjoyment. 
And the new set of laws, set down by a group of individuals connected to the game including participants, organisers, coaches and referees, will be applied for the first time at this weekend’s FA People’s Cup first round, in which over 200 Walking Football teams will participate in one of 16 categories. 
The laws have been distributed to host centres and County Football Associations with a view to fully training referees in due course. 
They centre around the key principles of no running, low contact and no over head-height kicks. A key aspect is the use of sin bins for two-minute periods when players breach the no running rule. "

Heres the link www.thefa.com/news/2017/feb/22/laws-of-walking-football-launched-220217

Play in our recent sessions has been very swift, so in an attempt to slow the pace down (without the need for constant referee intervention) we played last night with a regulation size 4 Futsal.
Overall the experiment was well received. The lack of bounce takes a little getting used to, but the ball does tend to stick at your feet. meaning its under better control, and it requires passing with a lot more precision. The downside is that shooting requires a lot more power & effort.
As anticipated, the resultant pace of the game was slowed down, as we all seemed to concentrating a lot harder on controlled play.
The experiment will be continued.