Autumn beckons. Kids everywhere are being signed up for various forms of winter sport by eager parents - eager either to revisit their splendid sporting days or to wallow vicariously in sporting success they never tasted if, like me, mediocrity was a bar set much too high. Some parents may even be motivated by purer concerns, such as instilling team spirit or simply wanting their children to have fun.

It's likely that your child won't play for Australia, so get off their back. And paying your kids cash for scoring goals or tries is not preparing them for the realities of a capitalist world. It's you being a goose.

Referees are already grappling with their issues - insecurity, inability to communicate, poor decision-making skills - why do you think they are out there in the first place? They don't need you to remind them, and acoustics at football matches are such that they hear every hurtful word.

Pity, too, the poor committee members spending long hours freezing their bits off in creaky halls, ever fearful that grading players or telling a coach to go easy on the kids will conjure up a writ.

Lastly, if you are actually coaching your child's team for the first time, please heed some shame-faced advice. While it's a plain fact of life that as coach you will encourage your child to meet key performance indicators through a combination of angry threats, withdrawal of love and humiliation, contemporary expert opinion does not broadly favour this approach. Don't mope all week after a loss. The kids will have moved on.

Abandon the idea that your revolutionary program for drilling under 6s will mould a footballing machine: you will have to play with the hand you are dealt, including one card that spends the game being an aeroplane or digging holes with its boots. If you can get that kid to acknowledge the existence of the ball just once during the season you are a good coach. If you can stop them digging holes in the pitch you are a great one.