The sport I have chosen to reasearch locally and nationally about is football. The borough I live in and have researched locally on I Hammersmith and Fulham. Physical Activity and sport team are responsible for leisure centres, competitions, football courses and events throughout Hammersmith and Fulham, as well as organising teams for the Lillie Road 5-A-Side Football League and Harrow Youth League. There are many agencies which are involved in football, such as Sport England, Sports Coach UK and the Central Council for Physical Recreation. They work with schools and clubs to encourage the residents within the borough to participate in football, plus other sports. Over 1,200 people took up the Physical Activity and Sports Team’s Exercise referral scheme operated by the health and leisure project. This scheme was designed for those who could benefit from some sort of football training because of a medical condition. The Physical Activity and Sport team have five main aims.
There is only one main local league called Harrow Youth League which includes some of the following teams; Larkspur Rovers, Princess Park, Pinnstars, White City Boys and Court Park. Most of these teams train on Tuesday nights and Saturday mornings, with games played on Sundays. The majority of these teams are sponsored pro-star, local companies and other big companies such as Barclaycard. These names appear on the team’s kits and some training wear. These teams receive money from these sponsors for the club to spend on travelling, equipment, kits, etc. These are not just junior teams in junior leagues; most of the teams have an under-7’s team, under 9’s, under 11’s, under14’s, under 16’s and under 17’s. There is a senior side that play in the same leagues, but with senior versions.
Once playing in these leagues you can be selected to play for your borough, Hammersmith and Fulham. From playing for the borough you can get scouted to play for local clubs such as Fulham Football Club. There are many parks and open spaces offering residents and visitors to Hammersmith and Fulham, with an opportunity to enjoy playing football, in a safe and healthy environment. These parks include; Wormolt Park, Acton Park, Ravenscourt Park, Bishops Park, Little Scrubs. There are also football pitches in Hammersmith and Fulham, that teams or anyone can play on. These include; Wormwood Scrubs, White City Astroturf, Burlington Danes fields, Virgin Active, Acton Park Club, and East Acton Community Centre.
There are two local football clubs in Hammersmith and Fulham, Queens Park Rangers Football Club and Fulham Football Club. Fulham FC have many different age groups starting with the youngest, the Fulham juniors (under-7’s). They also offer teams for under-9’s, under-11, under-13, under-15’s, and then the under-17 Academy side, and the under-19’s. The under 17’s last won at Fulham home on the 04/10/03 with a 1-0 win over Reading FC. However the under-19’s won 3-2, according to the clubs official website. Fulham Football Club is sponsored by Puma, who supply their kits and training wear, and ‘Dabs.com’ who are the team’s official sponsor.
Fulham FC and the Local Education Authority have joined forces to implement the government’s football task force campaign against racism, show racism the red card. The campaign aims to eliminate racism totally from the English league and football grounds and the means by which they intend to do this is include trying to interest lots of youngsters in football and by recruiting players from minority ethnic groups. Fulham showed commitment to racial awareness as over 500 children from a mixture of cultural backgrounds competed in a tournament held in conjunction with Metropolitan Police and Kingston Youth Services. 60 teams participated with ethnic communities from Columbia, Somalia, Asia and Afro-Caribbean’s represented.
The National Governing body for football is the Football Association (FA). From the F.A’s official website, I found out that this association is in charge of the international team England and has the responsibility to select international teams for competitions, the disabled team, women’s team and football from grassroots level to the elite player level in the country. Its job is to promote football and raise money, establish and maintain rules, to organise competitions in football. The F.A is greatly funded from sponsorship deals and from merchandise which is sold. These merchandise, such as football shirts can be bought on their official web site. Another sponsor which is mainly on England’s training wear is ‘Nationwide’, which is one of the main sponsors of the F.A. Other sponsors include McDonalds, Umbro, Carlsberg, and Pepsi.