Any school holiday is a busy time for St Mirren's team of Community Coaches who are ably led by Frazer Robertson. The upcoming summer break will be no different with Frazer and his team all ready, willing and able to keep hundreds of kids occupied and happy with the various classes and courses.

Frazer said, "As usual we'll be doing our community camps this summer at the normal four venues, Paisley, Erskine, Renfrew and Linwood which will be open to all children. This year for the first time we will be running a 'girls only' camp which is a tie-in with the girls' classes we run on a Monday and Wednesday, Monday night is for primary school kids with Wednesday being for secondary school kids. We will also be doing the specialised development camps again this year.

"All these camps and courses will be spread over six of the seven weeks that the kids are off for the summer break."

While Frazer has confirmed that there will be an air of familiarity about the summer camps he is keen to stress that there will also be new options available this coming summer.

He explained, "We are also doing something else this year that we haven't done before. When the community classes close for the summer at places like the Lagoon in Paisley, Kilbarchan and Ralston we'll be looking to replace them on a Wednesday night, Thursday and Saturday with 'come and play' sessions.

"This will allow the kids from all over the community programme who still want to play football on a weekly basis to come along and play.

"This isn't a coaching class; the kids can just come along have a warm-up then play in small sided games all under our supervision. There is no registration necessary for the 'come and play' scheme, just turn up at the venue and you can take part in the games."

Year on year more and more kids turn up for the soccer camps and Frazer is only well aware that there is an onus on his team to provide as many camps as possible to cater for as many kids as they can while at the same time not diminishing the quality of the coaching being offered.

He said, "These camps are growing in popularity every year. We only used to do the four main community camps but we have now added in the 'girls only' camp and the player development camps.

"The development camps have been really popular especially as they are limited in the numbers that we can take, we have had many instances where the classes were fully booked. People then try to get on to the classes at short notice but all we can do is take their details and make sure that they get the applications sent out to them for the next set of camps. This year we have two specialised player development camps."

Last week around a hundred kids went to the KGV playing park in Renfrew to take part in the McDonald's Football Festival. Frazer and his team of coaches were also active in the day which turned out to be a great success.

Frazer said, "The day went really well. Peter O'Keefe who is a local franchisee of McDonald's was given an award by McDonald's to put on a football festival in his local area. Pupils from West Primary attended the festival.

"The festival was made up of football stations - inflatable football pitch, inflatable overhead kick station and inflatable dribble slalom to name but a few. Kenny Dalglish was also there and he took part in a question and answer session with the kids, the Scottish Cup was also on display.

"There was a prize draw held in which a young girl from primary 6 won the prize of being a mascot at an upcoming Scotland game at Hampden. So it was a great day out which all the pupils and teachers seemed to be really pleased with.

"I would also like to give a big thanks to John Cameron and the Arriva Bus Group who supplied a bus free of charge for the children to attend the festival."

In the last few months the Official Website has highlighted several community programmes and projects run by the Club, so we asked Frazer for an update on how they are progressing.

He said, "The Street Football Programme is still going very well. The feedback coming back from the Police is showing that reports of youth disorder are dropping on the nights that we have been in the area. We are talking of drops between 30 to 40 percent which is pretty considerable, the aim of this programme is to give youths something to do and keep them out of trouble and up till now it appears to be working.

"The programme has only been running for eight weeks or so but it is creating a lot of interest from other organisations as we are getting a lot of requests for information on the programme. So we have a few more things in the pipeline with the Street Football Programme which we hope to develop as we look to move on to the next stage.

"The recent visits by players to Linwood High and St Andrews Academy is something that is interesting Renfrewshire Council and it has been suggested that it could be done with other schools. We are working on a brochure that can be handed out to the active school coordinator at each school letting them know about the other visits. It is ultimately up to each school whether they want to participate or not in the project but we are hoping that things can develop from that."

As the saying goes, variety is the spice of life, and Frazer knows that the Community section must keep coming up with new ideas and initiatives to capture the imagination of the community - and not just the kids.

He explained, "There is a new community project being set-up in conjunction with the Power League in Paisley which is aimed at adults. I know everybody thinks of the community programme being about children, no doubt it is important to get kids into an active and healthy lifestyle but we feel that we should also provide programmes for adults within the community.

"With this in mind we are looking at running an adult 5-a-side league which will be held at the Power League, a well know venue within the community. It will be a normal league run on a weekly basis with prizes ranging from St Mirren merchandise to Season Tickets for the winners of the league.

"This project is still in the early stages of its development but it is something we are keen to start up as we want to encourage adults - as well as kids - to try and maintain a healthy lifestyle, and is there a better way of doing that than playing football?"

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