Let’s all start playing the game

Thanks to funding primarily from the Premier League and fittingly from the Professional Footballers Association, the Football League Trust has been established with one of its key priorities ‘to promote health and wellbeing in Football League club’ communities, says Dave Edmundson

There is an LS Lowry original painting displayed prominently at the Manchester offices of the Professional Footballers’ Association. ‘Going to the Match’ depicts in true Lowry style the matchstick figures huddling together, silhouetted against the night sky as they make their way to what was probably a Bolton Wanderers game at the old Burnden Park.

In those days it was hardly a healthy place to be, as crowds swayed up and down crumbling terraces, cigarettes clenched in teeth or gripped in cold fingers. The clouds of tobacco smoke would linger permanently, passive smoking for any child taken to the game by their father, all probably 30-a-day Woodbine users.

Yet here at Burnden Park and across the whole of the country, a community gathered together to support ‘their’ Football League club. Community cohesion would be evident as children were passed over the heads of strangers, down to the front so that they could watch the game unencumbered by an adult blocking their view.

After the game, as the crowd dispersed on foot to the terraced rows of houses, the children would emerge and during the week that followed, out on the streets jumpers were laid down for goalposts in an active and healthy rendition of the game they’d seen or heard about. And then, as the pit whistles and the mill sirens heralded the end of the working week, the cycle would start again and the community marched united back to the football ground to watch Town or Rovers.

Since Lowry captured the scene much has changed. A full circle has been turned because now the football club is supporting the community and especially in the field of health.

Football League clubs are at the heart of 72 diverse communities throughout England and Wales, and the Trust has implemented accreditation criteria, which requires member clubs to deliver programmes and initiatives in their communities across four core themes, one of which is health.

The Trust was established in July 2007, and in the last 18 months there has been a considerable expansion in the range of projects and activities being delivered by club community programmes - all of which are charities, attached to their parent club.

The launch of the ‘Building Healthy Communities’ at Milton Keynes Dons Stadium on November 27 was to highlight the work being carried out by Football League clubs under the umbrella of health and the impact and positive outcomes being achieved by the clubs in partnership with local agencies not least the local primary care trusts.

Across the league, 61 clubs are now engaged in delivering health projects and most are in partnership with their local agencies. With a political debate raging around the ‘cuts’ in public spending and the regular headline news items concerning NHS funding as well as the high costs of drug treatments, there is a desire to concentrate on preventative campaigns and programmes.

The approach is proactive rather than reactive with an emphasis very much on the active. The football club therefore is at last being regarded as a crucial and emphatic channel to promote, spread and tangibly deliver the results that can reduce the demands on the NHS.

Why? Because clubs are still perceived as the one iconic and universally recognised element within the communities they serve. This is particularly true in the Football League where many football clubs are engrained in the DNA of the town. Think of Barnsley or Preston North End, Chesterfield or Rotherham United. As a result, they can engage with a far wider reaching audience than other agencies who struggle to convey the key health messages that will change behaviours and reduce costs in the longer term.

Building Healthy Communities will continue to grow. Those 61 clubs involved in health initiatives will become a full complement of 72. Categories such as sexual health awareness (14 clubs), mental health (23 clubs) smoking cessation (11 clubs) and healthy eating, weight management and childhood obesity projects (44 clubs) will increase both in numbers of clubs and the diversity of health programmes once there is universal acceptance that the strongest partnership within a community is probably the Football Clubs Community Scheme, its well qualified staff and the PCT.

And along with the Premier League who have their own dedicated programmes under Premier Health, 92 football clubs make a perfect national and critical impact on attitudes towards health and health messages across England and Wales.

Football clubs not only build healthy communities but can also sustain them, as they engage with well over 1.5 million people of all ages. The Extra Time project, in conjunction with the Football Foundation, is aimed at getting the more senior age range active.

Swindon Town are one example where each week a group of 20 to 25 retirees gather to enjoy many different activities such as rowing, cycling and of course football.

At the other end of the scale, 22 clubs are involved in the ‘Fit for Football Project’, established in 2003, to address healthy lifestyle issues for children in disadvantaged communities in the Humber area, through the provision of fun, interactive games.

Fit For Football has won an Excellence in Tobacco Control Award from the Department of Health and came runner up in the Football League Awards as Best Community Initiative, 2007.

Football community schemes are now able to provide a five week after school programme (or full day programme) of different activities which both reinforce healthy lifestyle messages relating to healthier eating, being active and not smoking.

Leeds United and Southend United have appointed specific health workers to their staff. Leeds deploy their health professional in the most deprived areas of the city, a post part funded by the Football League Trust and the PCT, whilst the health practitioner at Southend is responsible for the renowned ‘Blues Bodycare programme’.

Nottingham Forest have Positive Pedal Power – a programme developed around the Wattbike, to measure various health indices at the start, middle and end of a tailored six week programme, aimed at 8 to 80 year olds.

Torquay United are the first in hopefully a long line of clubs operating the School Food Trust project designed to promote the take-up of school dinners. The scheme will utilise community coaches and players to sell the vital message of nutrition, explaining it as a necessity factor in becoming a professional athlete.

These are just a few examples of those 61 clubs currently engaged in delivering health programmes and contributing to building a healthy community. It’s not just the schemes themselves. The concept of stadium design is crucial. Go along to Preston North End, and there you will see the new North Stand that contains an NHS department where health consultations can take place within the ground.

It means the football ground is seen as a community facility, and the hard to reach may just walk through the doors of a stadium where they can consult with their GP rather than approaching a surgery contained in an anonymous health centre. Colchester United’s new stadium was built in conjunction with the requirements for new health facilities and both Chesterfield and Morecambe are planning similar health provision in their new stadia.

Over half a century later, a modern repaint of ‘Going to the Match’ would display a very different crowd. The once huddled figures struggling in the cold air, hampered with lungs diseased by cigarettes would instead by striding athletically through the gates of a well appointed and ultimately healthy stadium.

Dave Edmundson is Football League Trust general manager