my kids have always played up because it was a better footballing option.
Players should be in their corresponding age grade. Player development is club coaching and FTC.
Foal, your self-acknowledged hypocrisy doth confuse me. Also, your own club plays lots of players up - especially at 15/17/PDL grades - so I'm a tad confused about your confusion around the 'playing up' philosophy
this season 10 -14's are all in the correct age grade. Vim might correct me on this, possibly 1 x14th grader is in the 15's. Regardless, that's over 100 juniors playing in the right comp.
for the Girls, I think there is 1 in the 14's who could play 12's still. So I think we are doing the right thing.
for the 17's yes there is some 15's there but that is also to do with player numbers. I don't know about PDL.