Playing our part to help Save Our Beautiful Game

Fair Game’s Adam Harwood reports back from a day with Peter Crouch

FOR football to truly transform in the coming months, all at Fair Game are well aware we need unilateral support from across the various different stakeholders involved. The fans, of course, are already broadly onside. The appeal of Fair Game’s principles throughout the country demonstrates club support too from teams in the Championship down. Government, led by the Tracey Crouch report, is also realising the potential for change.

But what of footballers themselves?

It’s been long established that most footballers don’t themselves tend to get caught up in political and ownership issues affecting their clubs. Some are said to not especially like football; few seem to have, or are given the opportunity to have, the ‘my one and only club’ approach that fans are afforded; and even managers largely distance themselves from boardroom matters.

One now ex-footballer leading the charge for change, however, is the Robot himself, Peter Crouch.

London calling 

On a glorious day in mid-June, some 40 or so fans of clubs throughout the land joined forces and marched over Westminster Bridge calling for grassroots football to be saved. Waiting to receive them on Westminster Green was Crouch (the footballer, not the politician).

The reason? Because Crouch is on a mission to save football – and he knows he can’t do it alone. Joining forces with Fair Game and others is critical.

Here’s a list of just some of the clubs represented at the march: Luton Town, Darlington, Dulwich Hamlet, York City, Charlton Athletic, Bury AFC, AFC Wimbledon, Oldham Athletic, Leyton Orient.  

Other than the obvious of kicking a ball about every week for nine months, you wouldn’t necessarily say these sides have anything particular in common. But the fans do. All have been heavily wronged in the recent past – mainly by the owners who supporters have to entrust the safeguarding of their clubs to.

You could easily add to the list too. While representatives of the likes of Coventry City, Portsmouth, Bradford City and the like may not have been there in person, they were just as represented by those fans calling for football to once and for all recognise that it is not just about those sides who take their place at the top table. In the case of Bury (and others, whole communities suffer when the football team does).

Crouch, who himself played for many of the elite sides, gets this. His latest series ‘Save Our Beautiful Game’ has, at its heart, the cries of thousands of fans for Government action to be both loud and meaningful, and secure clubs for generations to come.

 Using Dulwich Hamlet, Crouch’s first club, as a template, he understands the power for even non-league sides to be ‘nerve centres’ of their communities. When Hamlet thrive, so does Dulwich – not least in generating interest, and therefore income, in the area from outside.

Let’s hope that more figures from the footballing world can follow Crouch’s lead and up the pressure for long-lasting action.

Peter Crouch’s Save Our Beautiful Game can be viewed on Discovery+ and Amazon.