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Volunteering at Scouts is changing to help us reach more young people

Volunteering is changing to help us reach more young people

Volunteering is changing at Scouts. Read more

Discover what this means

Footy fandom

Veterans of the game and those making their debuts come together in this group-led football fact fest.
Plan a session with this activity

Back to Activities

You’ll need

  • Tables
  • Chairs
  • Pens or pencils
  • Craft materials (for example, tissue paper, pipe cleaners, stickers)
  • Scrap paper, plain and coloured
  • Flipchart or whiteboard, with pen
  • Football-related items, including a ball, kits, boots and anything else
Open plan
PDF – 93.0KB
Download Open plan

Before you begin

  • Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Additional help to carry out your risk assessment, including examples can be found on our safety pages.
  • Two weeks before running this activity, ask around the group and find out who’d like to run a football-related activity as part of a session. See how much or how little each football enthusiast would be willing to do. It may be that there are a limited number of willing enthusiasts, so individuals might need to run more than one activity.
  • The chosen enthusiasts should think up, prepare and run between three and six activities at the same time in the session. They may use activities from those provided in these instructions. It’s their responsibility to make sure all activities are accessible, safe and suitable for the rest of the group, and that resources are prepared for each activity. They also need to make sure they cater for football lovers and those who aren’t so interested in the game. Fill in the activities on the ‘Open plan’ sheet.
  • One week before running this activity, the enthusiasts running activities should complete their plans and hand these to the person leading the activity. The person leading the activity should check the plans and ask questions about how they’ll manage risks and how they’ll keep everyone engaged.

Run the activity

  1. Several or all of the enthusiasts who’ve prepared activity bases for this session should introduce the activities to the rest of the group. They should also talk about why they’re football enthusiasts, what excites them about the ‘beautiful game’ and discuss their favourite football-related memory or experience.
  2. Depending on how many people are running bases, you may be able to have the rest of the group move between activity bases throughout the session. Alternatively, the person leading the activity or other volunteers could step in to run the bases with no enthusiasts. If there are more activities than there are people running bases, run activities one after the other, or two at a time. Set up for all of, or the first, activity/ies.
  3. Run the activities.

Here is a sample session plan that you could use:

You will need

  • Rules, regulations and expectations cards
  • Everyday recycled goods and old drinkware
  • Famous faces quiz sheet
  • Football fact or fiction cards
  • Coloured items or colour-cards
  • Sheet
  1. Explain that this activity tests knowledge of football’s many rules and regulations. Players should sit back-to-back in pairs, with one player A and the other B.
  2. Player A is given a pre-prepared card with a picture on it. The picture should show a rule, regulation or expectation (i.e. a player running offside or committing a foul).
  3. Without using any words related to football, Player A should describe what’s on the card to Player B. Player B should try to guess the football rule, regulation or expectation.
  4. Continue playing until two minutes have gone. Count how many Player B guessed. The players should then swap places and play again, to see if the other person can guess more.
  1. Give out everyday recyclable items and old drinkware, as well as craft materials. Individuals or groups should use these to create football trophies from around the world, using what they know about the nation (or the trophy itself!) to decorate their creation.
  2. Give each group or individual a piece of paper with the name of their trophy on it. Some examples you could use are: ‘The FA Cup’ (England, all FA-affiliated professional and amateur league teams), ‘The Copa del Rey’ (Spain, the Spanish league cup), ‘The Meisterschale’ (Germany, the Bundesliga title trophy) and the ‘World Cup’ (international, awarded to the best footballing nation in the world).
  3. When the trophies are complete, each player should try and guess which trophy the others have made. Trophy makers may point out features they’ve added, but shouldn’t say the name or the location of their trophy until it’s correctly guessed.
  1. Players should get into small teams. Give each team a pre-prepared ‘Famous faces quiz sheet’ and pens or pencils.
  2. Each team should try to guess all the famous sports personalities from their faces. They may be footballers, their family members, legends of the game, club owners, pundits or famous football managers.
  3. See who got the most answers correct. That team is the winner.
  1. Give out some pre-prepared fact cards to groups. They should each say a thing that’s happened during a football match. These could include anything from strange goal celebrations to poor fan behaviour.
  2. Each group should decide whether they think the fact card is ‘true’ or ‘false’.
  3. See who got the most answers correct. That group is the winner.
  1. Give out pre-prepared flashcards to groups, with the name of a league team or footballing nation on them. This should be a fairly well-known football team with a familiar shirt.
  2. Everyone then has 30 seconds to find an object, or a pre-prepared colour-card, that’s the same colour as that team’s shirt. Shirts with more than one colour require groups to find both (e.g. ‘Brazil’ will need a green and a yellow thing). Shorts and sock colours needn’t be found, unless anyone fancies an extra challenge!
  3. See who got closest to their shirt’s colour. You could award points on a scale of one to 10 based on likeness.
  1. Lay out some football-related items. This could include football kit, scarves, strips or match programmes. There should be no more than 15 items.
  2. Allow everyone to look at the items for about 30 seconds, then cover them with a cloth.
  3. Everyone should make a list of the items they remember. See who correctly remembers the most items. That person is the winner.

Reflection

For some, this activity might have been right up their street, though they may still have stepped out of their comfort zone! Footy fans needed to think carefully about the activities they chose, prepared and ran, so that everyone could play their part, whatever their level of football knowledge. Were group-led activities a success, and would you like to see more group-led sessions in future?

Safety

All activities must be safely managed. You must complete a thorough risk assessment and take appropriate steps to reduce risk. Use the safety checklist to help you plan and risk assess your activity. Always get approval for the activity, and have suitable supervision and an InTouch process.

Active games

The game area should be free of hazards. Explain the rules of the game clearly and have a clear way to communicate that the game must stop when needed. Take a look at our guidance on running active games safely.

Scissors

Supervise young people appropriately when they’re using scissors. Store all sharp objects securely, out of the reach of young people.

Glue and solvents

Always supervise young people appropriately when they’re using glue and solvent products. Make sure there’s plenty of ventilation. Be aware of any medical conditions that could be affected by glue or solvent use and make adjustments as needed.

Rubbish and recycling

All items should be clean and suitable for this activity.

To add a competitive element, run this session with a football-style league table. Groups could give themselves a team name and add their points from each activity to a scoreboard. The team that gets the most points across all the activities is the overall winner. To make these teams fair, try to spread out those with extensive footy knowledge among different teams.

  • For ‘Team colours scavenger hunt,’ use colour-cards with the name of the colour written down.
  • Make sure all written text is easy to read.

All Scout activities should be inclusive and accessible.

Scouts Sports Enthusiast Activity Badge

If this was a success, continue to plan group-led activity sessions, with other themes like skills, music or the arts.

Young people who are into football should take this opportunity to run activities, share their knowledge with others and express how football makes them feel.