As a child, the first thing I fell in love with (outside my family, of course) was football! From the age of around 5 years old I was obsessed by the game, I couldn’t get enough of it. Playing with my friends at school, in the garden with my brother, or even in the house with a rolled-up pair of socks as the ball (to my Mum’s annoyance!). All I ever wanted to do was play football, and if I wasn’t playing it, I’d be going through my football sticker albums trying to fill them up and learn all the players named.
My love for the game continued to grow, and one of my earliest memories was when my Dad took my brother and me to our first ‘proper’ football game at the Abbey Stadium, home of Cambridge United. I can explain now how excited I was when I first saw the stadium and the crowds queuing to get in through the turnstile. And when inside, I was in football heaven, being so close to the action, hearing the fans singing, the smell of the turf! The whole experience encapsulated me; I was football crazy!
Football was my happiest place, either watching or – even better – playing, I was 8 years old when I started playing organised football for my first grassroots club called Melbourn Tigers. We wore a yellow and green kit just like Norwich City, and I used to wear the number 9 shirt! Back then, grassroots teams started at under 9s, and incredibly, we would play our games on a full-size pitch with full-sized goals; there were no small-sided games for younger children back then! But that by no means took away any of my enjoyment, the highlight of the week was Saturday morning when we would play our matches!
In my first season playing football I scored 104 goals including 13 in one game! The reason for me scoring so many goals was undoubtedly because of the big pitches where I could use my speed to run away from defenders and whack the ball in the massive goals! But my most precious memories of those earliest experiences are not the goals I scored or the games we won, they are the memories of running around with my friends and having fun, and the excitement of playing on a proper pitch with nets in the goal.
Now fast forward 35 or so years, and I’m working with the Football Fun Factory, whose ethos and values are built to give children these incredible early experiences in football, helping them fall in love with the game just as I did at a young age. We use football as a vehicle to develop positive life and social skills that support human development. Our programmes are about providing children and families with unique memories that will last a lifetime. Because at its very best, that’s what football can do!
This week at the Football Fun Factory, we’ve been celebrating Children’s Mental Health Week, an annual event established by the children’s mental health charity Place2Be
This weekend, James, Jonny, Oli, and I are off on a little trip, and we couldn’t be more excited! After a hectic but brilliant start
