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| 'Spurs in the Community' posted by Bernie Kingsley on 27/01/2002 | On 11th January Trust Community reps Karen Smith and Bernie Kingsley met Steve Grenfell, THFC’s Football in the Community Officer. Steve originates from Enfield, has always supported Spurs and came up through the schoolboy ranks to become a professional in the mid-1980s. He left Spurs in 1986 and later played for Colchester United and several non-League clubs before going into coaching and teaching.
Steve returned to the club in 1998 as Community Officer but told us that there has been a sea change in the way the scheme is viewed internally in the last year. Currently based in a very cramped office on the ground floor of the Red House – the club offices on the corner of Bill Nicholson Way – which he shares with a secretary and loads of boxes, the success of the scheme and the club’s renewed commitment to it means they will be expanding into an adjacent building very soon.
The primary aims of Spurs’ FITC scheme are to provide opportunities for children, mainly aged 6 to 14 (though some up to 17 through particular organisations like the Met Police) to receive quality coaching and then to profile those youngsters so that the best of them will be brought into the Spurs Academy. Members who attend the PLC AGM will recall a heated debate a year or two ago when someone who is very involved in Haringey schools football (who may be a Trust member – if you are please get in touch!) criticised the club for its lack of activity locally and allowing other clubs like Charlton onto ‘our patch’. Steve sees his role and that of the team of coaches who work for the scheme to reverse that trend.
Spurs in the Community also has significant involvement in the Kick It Out campaign against racism, mainly in Haringey but also in the Chigwell and Epping areas because of the training ground’s location, and also in campaigns aimed at helping people with disabilities.
The scheme will always run fee-paying courses, but much if its work is in local schools and community groups which largely goes unseen by the public – and Spurs supporters in particular, unless your child attends one of the schools in question. There is a need to keep growing but the scheme has qualified coaches working in schools every day, many of whom are former Spurs players, like Garry Brooke and David Kerslake.
The scheme is self-financing, with major sponsorships from McDonalds, Railtrack and Barclaycard, but also deriving financial help from many local firms. This is where supporters can play a part – we all work somewhere and any support we can persuade our employers to give, however large or small, will help develop the scheme.
The Football in the Community scheme also has indirect benefits for all of us. Its very existence has been a factor in gaining planning permission from Haringey for the proposed East Stand, as the club and the council work together to out something back into the local community.
Trust members can help the scheme by raising awareness of it among supporters in general and we hope that Steve Grenfell will contribute to a future newsletter to keep us up to date with progress and give us a wider view.
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