Coventry City to become a major player in the community

18 December 2012 14:17

Coventry City Development Officer Steve Waggott has re-iterated his desire for the Sky Blues to be a major player in the community.

Speaking to the Coventry Telegraph's Andy Turner, Mr Waggott said: "I am trying to move towards a community charter with the club, Sky Blues In The Community Trust and Coventry Sports Foundation being the first founder members and bringing in other partners.

"To me that's what I call a proper football club. You are successful on the pitch - you have got to do that - and drive the commercial revenue,and we have this huge community activity programme with the Coventry City badge at the forefront of everything that's going on.

"Football is probably the 21st century youth service. Kids are drawn to it because of Sky TV and the profile of the players is huge. It's a huge industry and from a society point of view it's huge what football can do.

"We can address issues like obesity, crime, alcoholism, kids smoking cessation. Football can deliver the lot. I have stood in front of politicians galore and said you will never find a more powerful way of reaching out to those communities.

"They can be the hardest to reach people but if you take a bag of balls,a whistle and couple of Samba goals and watch what happens. They just come out, and when they come out to play you can get key messages across.

"At Charlton I sat on so many committees and one of the greatest comments I got was someone said I was like a rash on the community because they realised we were in schools at breakfast, curriculum time and lunchtime, after school clubs and followed the kids into their estates - and some really difficult estates - and worked with them until midnight and then started all again the next day.

"We need to get the club involved in key targets at the council because football can deliver a range of programmes to get people employable and even employ some of them as well. We have a lot of casual match day staff and that could be the first step to full-time employment."

Source: DSG