Feature interview with West Riding County FA CEO Hannah Simpson

Raising the bar: West Riding County FA chief executive officer Hannah Simpson

Words and photos by James Grayson (Twitter: @jamesAgrayson, @NonLeagueNorth)
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This is final instalment of an enlightening three part interview with West Riding County FA chief executive officer Hannah Simpson. The first two parts can be read HERE and HERE.
More than ever, the West Riding County FA is leading from the front and driving the development of the game in West Yorkshire forward.
Seen as an important outpost by the Football Association, ‘football mad’ County chief executive officer Hannah Simpson has led a “culture change internally” since she replaced the long-serving Roy Carter in January 2012.
Participants – clubs, players, referees – work more closely with the County than ever before and everyone is reaping the rewards.
The West Riding has more staff than ever working at Fleet Lane. Referees are looked after from the moment they step through the door, while clubs and leagues have a bigger pool of football development officers to work with.
Miss Simpson, 32, has been the orchestrator of the changes and she pulls no punches when talking about how the County was previously perceived.
“This County FA is steeped in history and it is a traditional County FA,” she says from inside your office at Fleet Lane.
“It was always been ‘we do it this way every single year and you will either like it or lump it’.
“That has been pretty much the message. It is not the message anymore.
“It has taken a culture change internally so our customers have confidence in the system.
“I think people saw us as a closed shop
“We weren’t particularly approachable. We were very rule and regulation led and with new people coming into the game, I don’t think we gave them the helping hand they need to understand what our role is.”
Ask someone two years ago what the County did and the most popular answer would be that the West Riding are there to hand out punishment for red and yellow cards.
But scratch the surface and there’s plenty of interesting things that the County run.
“I have 15 Football Development officers upstairs doing everything from women’s football to disability football to refereeing to college and community work,” Miss Simpson points out.
“How many people know we do that work? We handle yellow cards, red cards and hold commissions and I guarantee that (previously) 60% of people we deal with knew about the governance side of things, but not about all the other good stuff we do.
“When I came in I wanted us to be closer to clubs and leagues so now every league that is affiliated to this county has an individual member of staff assigned to them.
“They go to League committee meetings, AGMs and they converse with the clubs.”

West Riding County FA chief executive Hannah Simpson was appointed to the role in January 2012

Miss Simpson, herself, has an interesting background in football. Nottingham-born, she grew during the final throes of Brian Clough’s empire at Nottingham Forest and became a season-ticket holder in the early nineties.
She watched on as Frank Clark guided Forest into Europe and only stopped being a season-ticket holder when University brought her to Leeds Met where she studied Sports Science.
The County’s CEO has also played a bit too at a high level – for Nottingham Forest, Hull City and the not so glamorous Arnold Town as a midfielder, “technically good, but the slowest player you will ever see”.
From Leeds Met, B-Licensed coach Miss Simpson coached in America with Major League Soccer before returning to UK to become a Football Development Officer for the East Riding FA for three years.
A four year stint as a Senior Football Development Officer at the Liverpool FA followed until she won the post at the West Riding in late 2011.
Since then there has been major changes and lots of achievements that she has much pride in, like ensuring in the last 12 months that £24,000 from a fund has gone into attracting people into the game and supporting adult 11v11 football.
“It has allowed teams to start up and the money has gone towards paying for things like their County affiliation or balls, cones, pitch fees,” she says with pride.
“It was really important to me because ultimately we can put a load of IT systems together, we can run the best County Cup competition you’ve ever seen and make fancy documents, but when someone knocks on my door and says ‘Hannah, we haven’t even got a ball’, that (helping them) is the core of our work.
“The focus has to be on what do you physically need to go and play football?”

West Riding County FA CEO Hannah Simpson in conversation with Non League Yorkshire reporter James Grayson

There’s more to come as well. Miss Simpson hopes to add further achievements to her and the County’s bow.
The West Riding is one of 12 pilot counties using the FA’s new online affiliation system which has been well-received by club secretaries.
She has had conversations with our senior Non League clubs with regards to setting up a West Yorkshire Reserve League which would cater for sides such as Farsley AFC and Ossett Town and other teams who currently play in the Lancashire League.
Talks broke down earlier this year, but Miss Simpson would like to revisit the idea. And there is also the issue which dominates local adult and junior football – pitch fees.
It is a problem that is very real and the West Riding are trying to help.
“Clubs have a struggle in funding facilities at NCEL level, but look at step seven and below, where clubs get their facilities from the Local Authority,” she admits.
“The local authorities have been told to save billions of pounds over the next four years so the first thing they do is hike up the prices on the pitches. That’s no good for me.
“People say, and it does happen, ‘the local authority has put up our pitch prices, Hannah can I have £250’?
“I can understand why they would ask me, but ultimately ‘I’m going to have to give you £250 every single year and if I’m giving you £250, I have to give 1200 clubs £250’. It is just not feasible.
“The root of solving the problem is working with local authorities to have playing pitches strategies and to make sure that we can give some ownership of maintenance to clubs so they’re not paying for the maintenance programme.
“We have actually supplied line markers and tractors to some grounds just so the local authority can take that off the bill.
“We have loads of examples where people have said ‘you give it to me and we’ll manage it’. When volunteers are put on the spot and we say ‘this is how we are going make it work for you’, they graft and quite rightly so.”
And that’s just one item on her list so there’s plenty more achievements waiting to come out of Fleet Lane.

For more information about the County FA, click HERE.