Our Purpose

Creating Opportunities for Our Game to Evolve & Thrive

Hampshire FA have today launched a new strategy, which has been formed with the needs of our community in mind and centres around 12 clear member priorities that were identified through consultation.  We started with the insight and data gathered centrally by The FA’s Conversation About The Game, and then checked these findings locally through our Tell Us campaign at the beginning of 2024. We believe that by focusing on these 12 key areas we will achieve success across all strategic objectives and provide the best possible service to our community.

Both football and the Hampshire community are continuously changing so it is important that Hampshire FA adapts with it. We aim to be a modern County FA that acts in balance as both a local governing body for our game and a high-quality football service provider.  We believe that this unique combination will help to ensure football in Hampshire evolves and thrives over the next four years and beyond.

Looking back before we look forward

Before we look ahead to the exciting challenges planned for the next four years, we felt it important to review some of the successes against our targets from our 2020-24 strategy.

Evolving with the Game

The objectives of our ‘Evolving with the Game’ strategy reflect those in The FA’s ‘Thriving Grassroots Game’ 2024-28 Strategy and is rooted in the three key drivers: Support thriving community; Connect and serve participants; Progress the game’s governance.

Evolving with the Game is the result of a concise consultation process, giving us the direct feedback of over 2,300 participants in the grassroots game across Hampshire. With the aim of evolving the game, and doing so with Equality, Diversity & Inclusion at the heart of all that we do, we are excited to present our 12 member priorities for the 2024-28 period of developing the grassroots game in Hampshire.

On Hampshire FA's new grassroots football strategy, Hampshire FA CEO, Neil Cassar, said: "The new strategy is rooted in the feedback from those who make grassroots football in Hampshire what it is. Without the hard work of volunteers, coaches, referees, players, leagues and clubs, none of this would be possible.

Since our last strategy, we have made important progress, firstly by recovering from the disruption of Covid and facilitating grassroots football back to its full capacity. We have also made significant headway in serving our participants, by opening our fourth facility, the King George V Football Complex in Portsmouth.

With all of the progress from the past four years, we are excited to be going even further to better our participants' experience through improving and delivering equal playing opportunities, developing valued networks of volunteers, creating thriving communities and tackling poor behaviour.

Our 2024-28 strategy gives us the direction to create opportunities for our game to evolve and thrive, and I am confident in our teams, volunteers and workforce to keep evolving grassroots football in Hampshire."

On Hampshire FA's new grassroots football strategy, Head of Strategy & Delivery, Chris Smith, said: "At the beginning of 2024, we set out on a mission to gather invaluable feedback from our grassroots football community, and help us shape our strategic priorities for the next four years.

From just over 3,000 engagements, we were able to define 12 clear themes to evolve our grassroots game. This feedback was crucial to our vision as an organisation, and I am excited about the way we will be able to improve and facilitate the participation in grassroots football in Hampshire over the next four years.

With Equality, Diversity & Inclusion guiding everything we do, we are here to help the game evolve and thrive."

DOWNLOAD 'EVOLVING WITH THE GAME 2024-28' STRATEGY