Following Jewison Bennette's scrap with a ball boy at Blackburn, Ian Burnett discusses whether the idea of a 'ball boy' is actually an outdated concept...
What is the point of ‘Ball Boys/Girls' at football games? I really feel that we missed out on keeping a sensible idea from the days of lockdown football games in empty stadiums.
You will recall at the time there was no crowd to throw the ball back onto pitch side after it had left the play of field. I remember there were a scattering of stewards strategically placed around the stadium to retrieve match balls and return them to the side of the pitch whereupon a ball boy/girl would place the ball on a sort of raised training cone at various points around the perimeter of the pitch. This enabled a continuous flow of play to the game as players didn’t need to wait for the ball to be returned from the crowd.
What I have witnessed since the return to watching with crowds at stadiums is ball boys/girls sitting freezing cold on tiny stools around the perimeter of the pitch too cold to move from their stools to go retrieve the ball from the crowd. That is if the crowd decide to return it directly to them after keeping it to themselves to waste time or just to keep ball anyway. The ball is usually returned directly onto the pitch anyway for the throw taker to pick it up and restart play anyway.
There is also the argument about ball boys/girls being encouraged to retrieve the ball once its gone out of play in the slowest possible timeframe when the home team is winning. This happens at all grounds and must be a key part of training they receive from the club. There was an incident in our recent game at Blackburn which resulted in the ball boy being asked to leave his position for his own safety. This altercation involving Jewison Bennette highlighted the issue to me. We were not updated on the TV coverage of exactly what happened but I guessing gamesmanship was the cause. This incident also ended up with Bennette being yellow carded.
So I ask that for the benefit of sportsmanship, keeping the flow of the game moving and to prevent ball boys and girls from freezing themselves, let us implement having multiple footballs around pitchside and make full use of the time. I note some of the ladies football games have continued using the idea, and many top-level teams have already introduced a 'multi-ball' system.
