Football didn’t come home in the end but the sport will always have a home in the centre of our community in the form of the brilliant Kings Hill FC. With that in mind CommunityAd checked in with the chairman of the club Barry Gethin.
So, Barry, how wonderful has the summer been thus far at the club? Not only to have everyone back in training but to have your wonderful facility utilised by the whole community to watch Gareth’s Lions, must be brilliant?
Well, after another very unusual season with such a long break during lockdown, it has been fantastic to get our teams back to playing football from April onwards. Everyone has really enjoyed being back on the pitch and the icing on the cake has been to watch the England team have such a successful tournament and so nearly bringing it home! We have been able to form an excellent relationship with tmactive, the new managers of the Sports Park, and it’s been great to see several of our teams and the wider Kings Hill community enjoying cheering England on from the Sports Bar.
It seems like such an inclusive and fun club to be a part of, how do you go about achieving this?
We certainly hope so. We have over 50 teams at the club now including girls, boys and adult teams running from under 5’s right the way up to Walking Football and we aim to cater for all abilities within our teams. In the vast majority of our junior teams all players are entitled to at least 50% game time every week and we aim for every player to have a place at the club for as long as they want it. We are immensely proud of all of our teams and we were delighted to see the return of our Frame Football team in May following such a long, enforced, lay off, as well as to have introduced our junior and adult Jets (deaf, disability and SEN) teams during the season.
If any readers perusing this article are thinking of getting involved or sending their youngsters along, why should they?
Getting involved in team sports from a young age is a great way to make friends, develop confidence and support physical and mental wellbeing. At Kings Hill FC we strive to give local youngsters the platform for all of this while helping to develop their footballing ability to their full potential, whatever that may be. We hope that we try to do things in the right way and that the players that come through our club have great fun, make lifelong memories and that a large number of them go on to play football into adulthood.
Any dates for our readers’ diaries?
We have just held our annual presentation day on 17th July and so everyone is now enjoying the break of a slightly calmer period before the new season begins. Our men’s 1st team are already back in pre-season action and their 1st league game is 14th August with other adult teams following soon afterwards. Our junior teams will start back training in late August with league matches beginning from early September. We’d encourage as many local residents as possible to come down to the Sports Park and support our teams in the new season.
Further ahead, we are also looking forward to our 20th anniversary in 2023 and plans are already beginning to celebrate that.
The club is entirely volunteer run so just a huge thanks to the army of volunteers that give up so much of their own time to help run a grassroots club of our size. Without them, and our generous sponsors, and local companies who support us through the KHFC business partnership, the club simply could not exist and have developed in the way that it has so far. Thank you all.