This weekend marks the end of an era in Kent Football as the tenure of Paul Dolan as CEO of the Kent FA comes to an end.

In an exclusive interview with KSN, Paul has been reflecting on his time working with the Kent FA and his hopes for the future…

Meeting in the Council Chamber at the Kent FA’s Ditton base, Paul admitted: “It’s been a bit of a surreal week really.  I’ve been here fifteen years now – started as Football Development Officer moved up to County Development Manager before moving up to CEO eight years ago.  So, its been a massive part of my life.”

“It feels incredibly strange leaving the Organisation but on the positive side, I’m not going very far!  My new role is with the FA as a regional manager for the South East which means that Kent will be one of the counties that I oversee.  I hope to keep the same relationships and be in a position to help the new people going forward to try and promote, protect and develop grassroots football in Kent.”

“Football has definitely changed during my tenure – we’ve seen massive increases in participation levels in most forms of the game, but the challenge moving forward undoubtedly is towards the traditional eleven a side football which is still in decline and poses a real challenge for counties and the FA in general.”

“We have to look to develop a product that suits changing lifestyles so that people can play when they want to play, rather than when League dictate they play.  So there have been a lot of successes, but there are still an awful lot of challenges ahead.”

“I do believe the interest to play the game is still very much there, but it does reflect when people want to and are more importantly are able to play. The challenge to the Leagues, the Counties and the FA is to adapt to those changes in the needs and to provide football on a more flexible basis.”

“Traditionally you worked Monday to Friday, nine until five and the weekend was when you went out and played Grassroots football. More and more people are now of course working six or seven days a week and more doing shift work; more people go to watch their local sides and with the games on television constantly, with the games on Saturday lunchtime, there’s the temptation to watch them instead of playing. So, the challenge is recognising that and trying to come up with ideas and solutions mitigating against that.”

“We’ve already set up one flexi-league down in Margate with four teams and they’re about to start their second season with eight. The idea is that we set it up through the County and then pass it to the League to administer going forward with the hope that the League take it on in a similar way that the Kent Disability League has grown and developed over the past few years.”

“And that’s what I see our role being in the coming years – working with the projects to increase the participation before the Leagues then come in and take it further in terms of making it more sustainable. The Flexi-Leagues will be designed for those who cannot play at the existing traditional times and so won’t take players away from existing leagues and we hope to develop and enable the new ones to establish themselves.”

“And whilst we are losing teams and divisions and leagues, we are finding that the size of the squads that are still playing in the League are actually getting bigger now to be able to cope now with the circumstances that Clubs find themselves in in order to fulfil their fixtures.”

“Another challenge is the ageing volunteer workforce and trying to attract more people into those roles.  We have to recognise that there are differences from where they are in the past, where by people were prepared to give up their time for no renumeration and “just” to volunteer.”

“You do still get that of course by the people who coach for their clubs, but what we need to do is to provide more administrative support for those who run the clubs – the secretaries, the chairs, and the treasurers – and I do think that there is the support out there, it’s just how we attract more younger people into these positions and one of the things that we say at the Kent FA is how good it is having volunteering for CV embellishment as it demonstrates a real pro-active character as someone who can go out and volunteer and help in their local community setting things up.”

“To progress in our industry in the area of Sports Development and Football Development it does make sense to be volunteering. The majority of our staff here are volunteers in Grassroots football as we feel that it’s essential really to know what’s going on out there and to appreciate what people are facing.”

“We don’t sit here Monday to Friday and then aren’t aware at what happens at training or at matches – we’re all involved in clubs and or leagues, we know exactly what goes on and gives us the tools to address that.”

“I don’t really have any regrets about anything that has happened during my tenure. One of the big things when I came into the role as CEO was that I wanted to increase the image profile of the Association and I think we’ve done that.”

“We rebranded very early on from the KCFA to the Kent FA with a dynamic brand. We went about looking at some of our assets – the County Cups – and how we could increase the profile of them.”

“We quickly got some commercial input and sponsorship into them and for the past six years we’ve had a terrific relationship with the Kent Reliance Building Society which has brought significant money into grassroots football in the County.”

“We’ve won various awards over the years in the County and so we have definitely improved the image of the association as a well respected and well recognised business and governing body of Sport, not only across the county, but across the Country.”

“I guess my only one regret is that I would have like to have progressed a bit further in the FA County Youth Cup which we last won in 2010. That is something that I’ve always said that it would good to try and get a team to try to get to the latter stages of that national competition with the amount of high standing Non-League clubs we’ve got and the players that we should have progressing in it.”

“I don’t see any reason in the future why we shouldn’t look at trying to get Kent as one of the top representative sides at under 18s in the country like it was when we won it back in 2010.”

“And of course, it would be great to get another professional club into the County. With the significant amount of “high level” Non-League clubs that we have in Kent, I really do hope that, that is now finally not too far away!

Under Paul Dolan’s stewardship, there is little doubt that football in our County has taken huge steps forward and is now one of the most respected bodies in the game.

When Darryl Hayden starts his new job on Monday morning, he’ll certainly know that he has some mighty big shoes to fill…  we wish him well and look forward to working with him in the years to come – thanks for everything Paul…