Hog roast party

To all you football fans out there, listen up. I have recently discovered a great way to give your team a great lift and push them on to league and cup glory. You don�t need to be a millionaire, just have a bit of passion for the team and you are sure to be backing a winner. Oh yes, and did I mention that it would help if your team is an under 11s football team with a sad looking changing hut and a decidedly bad pitch? Well, I have now. I am a proud manager in the north west of England, and whilst I would have loved to have been manager of one of the region�s top teams, it was not to be. So, when the local under 11s had a vacancy for someone to take the reins I thought I would give it a go. After all, was it really going to be that tough to manage a team of young boys and girls and transform them into champions elect?

The first meet up was a disaster. Half the team did not bother turning up and the rest of the team seemed like they had been forced into playing by rather eager parents hoping to have produced the next David Beckham or Hope Powell. On this evidence, that was not the case. I decided that I needed to employ some seriously good motivational tactics to not only motivate the children but the parents, too. My secret weapon was to be a pig shaped weapon and that was hog roast.

Yes, hog roast. Not for me the hairdryer treatment. I was going to take a different approach and make my team feel like a proper team and make the parents feel pretty special too. At the end of our third training session on a freezing cold night with hail, I sent my budding superstars home with a letter. It was an invite to the club�s relaunch party and it was going to be a hog roast party. I invited all the players, their parents and friends and supporters/sponsors of the club. It was a ticketed affair and it was going to be great!

I got some funny phone calls after that letter went home. �Relaunch? Why a relaunch?�, was one of the common themes. I knew that they would be a little curious but this was going to be a great chance to put a spring in the step of the players and make the club feel special again. But why hog roast? Well, a couple of years before, I had been to a similar event for a cricket club that had somehow lost its way. Nobody really cared for the club, the facilities looked tired and the players just played in the hope of a pint at the end of the match. The hog roast relaunch was a great success. Not only did we find five new players and really got people excited for the season ahead, a graphic designer came along and offered to redesign the club badge and help with smartening up the clubhouse. We even found a new club sponsor and that has made a fantastic difference to the facilities.

This was a bigger challenge though. The changing rooms were so bad that we could not even hold the hog roast there so we asked the local hotel if we could possibly use one of their function rooms. Amazingly, the manager used to play for the club and said we could have it for free. Everything started to fall into place and by the night of the event, we had guaranteed 93 people would be there.

The hog roast relaunch was fantastic. The kids - who I asked to come in the training gear � had a whale of a time and actually felt like professionals (which is what I wanted). They all adored the hog roast, as did everyone else. The hotel manager joined us and agreed for the hotel to sponsor the team�s new kit. We even got a new clubhouse/changing room promised to us by one of the player�s parents. Result.

At the first training session after that, 17 kids turned up and they worked their socks off. They all said that they wanted another hog roast at the end of season party. My answer? Win the local cup and I will make sure you get your hog roast. And guess what happened? Cup winners! When we redesigned our crest, a hog was included as a thank you!