Sitting down with Brian Flynn is an absolute pleasure as he tells CommunityAd how his first football memory of Bristol City Vs Leeds with his dad had left him mesmerised and a life-long Bristol fan.
So much so that when living in New York he often flew back for home games. Nowadays Brian confesses to being in the terraces watching Faversham Town, be it home or away.
Brian Flynn is the man charged with youth development here at Faversham FC. After a decade of being involved initially to coach the under 6’s, Brian now holds the title of Director of Youth Development and he does so with pride and passion.
The club seems like a community in itself – an extremely inclusive one as well as a successful one, how do you go about achieving that?
Any successful football club has to be a broad church. Not everyone gets on all the time, but we all have something to contribute and we are all working towards the same thing – to see Faversham Town progress as a club, play at a higher level and play a positive part in our community in every way it can. We’re all volunteers and we all want to provide the community with a club and facilities that they can be proud of, and a team that represents the town positively across the southeast.
Why do you think local football matters and why should readers consider coming along to a game and supporting their local side?
Local football is about more than our first team playing in the Isthmian League. It is about the supporters who helped the club rise from the ashes 15 years ago and turn up each week to cheer on the players. It’s about representing your town in a positive way and being part of it. It’s about the hundreds of boys and girls of all ages who proudly turn out each week in Town’s white shirt bearing our distinctive Three Lions badge (we’re the only team in England other than the national side that the FA allow to wear the Three Lions emblem). It’s about the disability sides offering football for all, the powerchair side, the walking football team that offers sport and exercise for older players, the Monday Club social club where pensioners gather each week to chat over a coffee and hot pasty and do some of the essential tasks around the club that keep it going.
Supporting Faversham Town is very different from going to watch professional clubs. Here, you are supporting the community you live in, you get to know the players and you can get far more involved. It’s easier to empathise with players when you know that they are playing for the club because they care about it, they do everyday jobs and they don’t leave in their Lamborghinis or pick up more for sitting on the bench for a game that most people earn in a year! You can often have a drink and chat with them after the game. You get to care about them, there’s a genuine sense that we are all in it together, and you also get to become part of the club.
Brian Flynn goes on to wax lyrical about the joys of the game day experience at this level, which in short are easy, cheaper and more accessible than the elitest professional level. He finishes with the following message to our readers: “Aquatherm Stadium is a special place – a proper local football ground with its own atmosphere and its own characters. The club is ambitious and there are plans over the next couple of seasons to develop the pitch, the stands and the facilities that we can offer the community. So it’s an exciting time to start supporting Faversham Town”.