THE chairman of the team that are on course to win the HFA County League believes grassroots football is really struggling in Herefordshire.

Graham Andrews helps run Hinton, who are top of the Premier Division.

Because they are flying in their league, Hinton don't normally have a problem in getting enough players on a Saturday afternoon.

But that is not to say that running the club is easy.

"To keep Hinton running every will cost us over £100 whether we play or not," said Andrews.

"We have to charge players to play and we don't find that the local businesses tend to support local football.

"If you look around the ground here, we struggle for advertising and struggle greatly on social media to get any businesses to come and be part of it and sponsor events or even a ball.

"We would like to attract a lot more of that and if we can do that, it will be a huge benefit for local football.

"Perhaps if the match officials were paid centrally through the HFA, then that would be a huge sponsorship and we can keep all that money back into the club.

"We're trying really hard in promoting local football and grab people to come and enjoy it.

"But there's so many other distractions for young adults who play football and it's very difficult to get these players to play.

"You can see it by players dropping out and clubs sometimes not able to field two teams.

"I've got a Division Six winners medal and it wasn't that long ago that I was playing.

"Now we're down to three divisions and there's even less amount of clubs in those divisions.

"There's so many other things to do now though.

"You can see live football and live rugby, whereas many years ago you didn't get that opportunity.

"Last season, he maybe had a lot of good players for one team but not quite enough for two teams.

"We've had to coach a lot of our under-17 players to become reserve team players, but you need to capture them and keep them playing.

"Player retention is the one thing that we're really trying hard to do.

"We need the players that have done their junior football here to become senior players and, if they have been to university, to come back and play and be a part of the club."

The County League is administered by the Herefordshire Football Association, who took over the running of the league from the Herefordshire Football League.

But Andrews hasn't noticed any difference than from previous seasons.

"Since they announced the sponsorship and the County League was going to be so much better for local football, I don't think, that within Hinton Football Club, we've seen a difference this year than from last year," said Andrews.

"We didn't have a problem with our admin previously, but it's nice that the system is all online and you can do it remotely, but we're looking for a bit more benefits for the club of how you can put things better on the pitch.

"The admin is great, but we were good at that anyway, so it's not a huge benefit for us."

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