Paul Elliott presents an award at One Game Kent
During this year’s One Game One Community weeks of action, Kick It Out held four community forums at professional clubs across the country, looking at local grassroots football issues.
Involving key decision makers and ex-players, these events aimed to explore the issues behind under-represented communities getting involved in football in each local area, liaising with County Football Associations, the Football Foundation, local professional club community trusts and ex-professional players.
During the two week period, forums took place at Newcastle United, Crystal Palace, Bradford City and Charlton Athletic, all under the One Game banner.
Each event was jointly hosted by Kick It Out, the local County FA (Northumberland, West Riding, Surrey and Kent) and the professional club’s community trust, with input from the Football Foundation.
Highlights
The highlights of the events were appearances and panel discussions with ex-players Paul Elliott and Ian Ormondroyd, former England rugby league player Ikram Butt and current professionals Zesh Rehman of Bradford City and Calvin Andrew, Nathaniel Pinney and Kieran Djilali of Crystal Palace.
The events kicked off with presentations made to the audience by partners about their work locally and moved onto panel question and answer sessions covering attendees’ issues and the experiences of the panel.
Finishing with a chance for everyone to network, the evenings were able to help forge local partnerships between community groups and football's decision makers.
The events brought in local people from grassroots clubs and community groups in their hundreds and have given them a platform to voice their opinions and concerns and links into all of the partner organisations.
Themes
There were some recurring themes from the audiences across the country as well as some location-specific discussions. The lack of Asians across the game was noted by all audiences.
Within Bradford this issue has been tackled over many projects but it was felt that the mainstream football community is yet to recognise and understand the problem.
The community trust at Bradford City FC, led by former player Ian Ormondroyd, has been aware of this problem for a number of years in Yorkshire and a lot of close work has been done with West Riding County FA and other local community organisations.
One such success of the work was displayed on the evening with Kick It Out’s community award going to BD3, a local predominantly Asian Muslim club who have increased their teams (both male and female) significantly whilst signposting players that excel to professional clubs.
Funding
A recurring theme for all club representatives at the forums was funding. The Football Foundation presented their schemes at three forums although an issue for many clubs is the ever-increasing number of clubs competing for funds.
County Football Associations expressed their concerns that although a structure was in place to support clubs through the funding process, clubs need to be given realistic expectations of success given the amount of competition for funding.
Audiences welcomed the forums as an opportunity for clubs and community groups to meet their local County FA and professional club face to face and Kick It Out hope to build on the success of all the forums with further events across the country.
