With Euro fever in full swing and the nation united behind Bale and co as they prove Wales’ worth on an international pitch, we caught up with an old favourite to look at why football is to so many, more than simply a game.
I suppose you may think that it’s easy for me to say that football offers so much more than a game. It offered me a career, a real life-changing opportunity. However, I’m talking not just from my own experience, but from seeing how it has helped many others from communities’ right across Wales.
A motto that we use at Welsh football HQ is Together Stronger and I think that is one of the most important lessons that football or any team sport will teach you; that nothing will be achieved as individuals.
It’s something that I remember learning early on in my career and it’s something that young children across Wales will be figuring out as they turn up for training sessions at their local park or 3G pitch. A football team will only be successful if they work together, if they learn to communicate well with each other and support each other.
These are lessons for life. Lessons that will help any child from any background get further in the career of their choice. I don’t think that there will be many of the country’s top CEO’s that don’t agree on this.
When we talk about ‘together stronger’ it doesn’t just apply to the 11 players that are on the pitch. A football team breeds a community for so many people to play a part in and belong to. From the coach, to the club secretary, to the volunteers that open up grounds of an evening and help fundraise for new kit, to the faithful supporters that turn up to every match (even if they are mums and dads), and even the ref!
And it’s not just top teams that I’m talking about here, it’s every club across the country and in each of these clubs all of these people play a hugely important role. They are often the people that facilitate the life-changing opportunities. Long before Ashley Williams and Joe Ledley met Chris Coleman they, like every other player in our Euro 2016 squad, were learning the very basics at their local club.
The coaches and volunteers within these clubs, all of whom will know who they are, should be sat proud at their local pub or even in their own living room watching as the guys line up and sing our national anthem, knowing that they very much helped to put them there.That feeling of pride and knowing that you’ve made a real impact on many lives is one of the best things that football can offer. Be it seeing a young man or women that you coached at 10 representing their country, graduating from university or even teaching their young family how to pass a ball. These opportunities come from roles that truly are open for anyone to get involved in.
Now, my final reason for why football is more than a game, is that the reach doesn’t just stop at the club gates. It runs through all of our local communities and brings us together as a nation.
Local football clubs are often at the very centre of a community. They offer facilities that often get used for more than just our beautiful game; providing a place to bring people together to, as I’ve already said, help shape the futures of our youngsters.
And it is this uniting quality that we see on a mass scale for our national squad at big tournaments. No matter where in the country we are from, we are all rooting for those lads, we want them to do well, in the same way that we want every one of the under 10’s team at our local club to go on and do well.
Realise it or not, in some cases football brings us together and offers us all the chance to be involved in something special, something important and something life changing. That for me is why it is so much more than a game.
For more information about how you can get involved with your local football team visit www.fawtrust.wales
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