Not for profit · Jordanstown
Football for one to five year olds, before it counts.
An hour every Sunday, indoors, with the same faces every week and you on the floor beside them. The environment before the player.
- When
- Sundays at 12
- Where
- Ulster University Jordanstown
- Ages
- One to five, in groups by age
- Cost
- £29 a month
Where things are
Six days from a message to a full hall.
This started as a message to local parents in September 2026. Six days later the first group was full, the room had been stretched by a quarter to fit everyone who wanted in, and the list closed. The first Sunday is 27 September.
The next group starts in January. Put your name down and you will hear the date first. Join the waiting list
Why it exists
Most children meet a club for the first time at five, on their own
They walk onto a pitch full of strangers, sometimes on a trial, in the cold. A club can only take so many, more children turn up than there are places, and children get cut or quietly drift off, before they have any real idea whether they like football.
Grassroots football is also short of coaches, and the Irish FA's new youth framework, which moves the youngest ages to smaller sided games for the children's own benefit, means clubs now need even more of them. Neither problem gets fixed at five. Both get easier if children turn up already knowing each other, with adults beside them who have spent three years getting comfortable around football first.
Why we started
The five year old this started with did not know a single person at his first club. He would not step onto the pitch. He sobbed at the side of it, week after week, while his dad tried to coax him, and after six weeks he was cut. He did not play anywhere for two years. Then his friends begged him to come to a kickabout, and he was not that keen on football, but he liked his friends, so he went. Straight on, first time of asking. Nothing about the game had changed. He knew the people.
What we do about it
Three things, and everything else follows from them
They arrive together, not alone
A group joins together and stays together until they are five, then moves on to a local club as a group. Most of the first group live within a few miles of each other, and will end up in the same nursery and P1 classroom. Friends from before nursery.
You are in it too, and not on your own
On the floor, with a ball, beside your own child. Nobody here is going to tell you how to handle them, but a hall full of toddlers being toddlers, with two dozen other parents working it out beside you, teaches you fast that refusing, crying and wandering off is just what two year olds do.
Nobody is keeping score
Grassroots football is fun at five, if you are picked. This is the bit before that: no sides, no trials, nothing to be picked for and nothing to be dropped from. A kickabout with people you like, where messing about is the whole point.
When they do move on at five, we help each family find a club that actually suits their child. That is a hard thing to judge from the outside and an easy thing for someone who has watched a child play every Sunday for three years.
The hour
What actually happens
About forty five minutes of football, because toddlers are done at around forty. It runs the same way every week, because two year olds like knowing what comes next, and four rules run all of it: nobody queues, nothing gets harder, nothing can be done wrong, and every game is a story.
-
12.00
Straight onto the floor
In through reception, someone walks you to the hall, and your child goes straight out to play. Come to the desk whenever it suits: name ticked off, a ball from the bag, and a coloured stamp on your hand that tells you where to start.
-
12.10
Two minutes, then go
The only talking anyone does. Your whole job in three words: stay close, praise trying, take breaks.
-
12.15
Three games, and a story in the middle
Three stations of about ten minutes, with a drink and a football book on the floor in the middle. Every station is a story rather than a drill, the sort of thing a two year old repeats in the car home. When the music plays you move. When it stops, you play.
-
12.50
Bubbles, and the stamp
A fist bump from the coach for every child, and the passport: you point at the line for something your child did today, they pick a colour and press the stamp in themselves. Leave whenever you are ready, and everyone is away by one.
The quiet corner
A corner away from the music, with a few small chairs, every single week. Any child who has had enough goes there with you and comes back when they are ready. Nobody is sent there and nobody minds.
Before you ask
The questions everybody asks first
Is one or two too young for football?
At one or two nobody is learning football. They are learning that a hall, a coach, a ball and a room full of other children are safe, with you beside them. That is the thing a five year old on a trial has to learn in one afternoon, on their own, and often cannot. The football can wait. This cannot.
My child has never kicked a ball, and neither have I.
Nobody here has. There is nothing to be behind on and nothing to catch up to, and plenty of the adults in the room have never played. You are not being asked to coach, only to be beside your child while it happens.
What if they will not join in, or they cry?
We are expecting it. A child who will not join in is the reason this exists. At five, in front of a coach with forty children, it can cost a place. At two, on your knee, it costs nothing. Watching is taking part. There is no drop off, so there is no handover to be upset about, and the quiet corner is there every week. Some children sit out for weeks and then one Sunday they do not, and by the time it matters, joining in is just what they do.
Are we committing to years of this?
No. Staying together is what is being built, not what you are being asked for. You pay monthly and you can stop whenever you like.
Next group: January
If this sounds like your Sunday, put your name down and you will hear the January date first.