Turf Season
Turf Season is a football(soccer) reality television show for promoting and rewarding Grassroots’ Football in Nigeria. The inuagural season is scheduled to start in April 2016 and run for 20 weeks. This will see about 460 football players participate in a contest where cash prizes will be awarded every week and with the season's overall best player winning a brand new car and a football trial tour in Europe.[1]
Concept/Background
Nigeria is a country of close to 200 million people and undoubtedly blessed with an abundance of talent in many fields, especially football.[2] Winning the FIFA U-17 World Cup five times, the amount of success the country has achieved in age group competitions only makes you wonder why the team have failed to reach the quarter-finals of the senior World Cup, despite appearing in three knockout stages to date.
As a fact, only just a few of these grassroots talents make a successful career in football. The factors militating against the rest of them are quite numerous, ranging from a lack of structure to dishonest agents and unqualified handlers to mention but a few. All these culminate to breed a contemporary culture of desperation among the football talents. In September 2015, Ukrainian border guards detained a team of 12 Nigerian footballers at Kiev’s Boryspil International Airport because there was no arrangement in place to welcome them at the airport and there was no scheduled competitions for the team.[3]
Turf Season appears to be the proverbial first step in averting this crises of talents in Nigeria's Grassroots' Football as it aims to provide not just entertainment but an avenue for the Nigerian grassroots football to learn the rudiments of the football career. Participants will experience, and be as well used as apparatus to teach the fundamentals of the football game as they will be exposed to expert knowledge and tutelage. They will also have to undergo physical, technical, tactical & psycho-social drills to merit a place in each episode.[4]
The Organisers
Turf Season is put together by Pocarti Business Enterprises, a 360° integrated media, entertainment, marketing & communications strategy company registered in Nigeria.
Synopsis
Grassroots Football is home to the greatest talents of our time. Only true character and skill will win Turf Season’s ultimate prize of a million naira, a car and an European tour.
Plot
Each episode, 23 grassroots players will be selected from those that must have requested an invite via SMS shortcode or via website sign-up.
These players will undergo skill tests from which the #Top10 will be selected and then divided into two teams to play each other in a 30 minute game. 3 backup players will also be selected in the event of an injury. The affected player(s) upon recovery and at coaches’ discretion may be allowed to return at a later episode.
Standard football match rules will apply with exception of the offside rule.
Each week, the #Winning5 gets cash prizes while the #Best5 will return next episode. The #Best5 will be selected by public voting and announced the next episode.
The longest returning player at the end of the season (20 weeks) wins the show's jackpot prize money, a car and a tour in Europe. In the event of ties, votes will be cast by viewers.
Timeline
- Season Premiere - April 2016