Carpooling and help from parents or relatives: how amateur clubs are coping with rising fuel prices.
The rise in fuel prices has not yet had too great an impact on amateur football competition, because the players organize themselves and families or relatives play along.
“It would probably become complicated if this situation is dragged on, or if prices continued to rise more.” In the heart of Brittany, in Loudéac (Côtes-d’Armor), club president Jacky Duault admits that the increase on the fuel prices, a consequence of the conflict in Iran since the end of February this year, is not yet a major concern for the club’s day-to-day operations. Less so than in the year 2022, at least, when a large part of France was affected by shortages. “ It represents an additional cost,” acknowledges the team leader, which boasts 428 members, “ but we’re trying to absorb it. Above all, there’s been a strong mobilization parents, for whom this represents a real burden, and a lot of carpooling.”
When it comes to shared transportation, amateur sports game have always been pioneers. “For the youngest players, the parents really get involved on them; they travel with the team coaches,” confirms the secretary of Étoile Fréjus Saint-Raphaël (Var). ” For the older team players, when they use the club’s minibuses, there is indeed an extra cost, but it’s not enough to make them question whether or not to travel.”
In some areas, the question has arisen. “We were contacted by two clubs to report potential transportation problems for playing in the Regional league competition ,” confirms Christophe Brossard, the president of the Indre-et-Loire District. Consequently, in Touraine, this particular issue is expected to be on the agenda of the next board meeting in mid-April.
In this context, some clubs are calling for a more streamlined travel schedule with players, with more grouping of away trips, especially when the distance is significant. “We’re optimizing travel by grouping or more journeys and limiting round trips whenever possible,” confirms by Frédéric Pereira, the president of Paris 13 Atletico, who also notes a “sharp increase” in the bus rental costs for the first team, which plays in the National league competition: “Our activities require regular travel, especially on weekends for the competitions, so our room for maneuver remains limited. We’re mainly trying to better organize the logistics, but it’s very difficult to fully offset these additional costs.”
With this in mind, in the year 2022, the French Football Federation distributed €2 million worth of fuel vouchers to several thousand clubs, those with registered with youth players, with vouchers ranging from €100 to €700 per club. According to the information, the Amateur Football League competition has made several proposals along these lines to Philippe Diallo, the president of the FFF.
