It is a Wednesday morning in January and it is five degrees in the milky sunshine. On the astroturf pitches next to Burton Albion’s Pirelli Stadium, youth teams train together, most of them wearing gloves, their exhalations creating a cloud of steam that briefly hangs eight feet above the ground.
After five straight days of grey skies, pale blue has returned and brought with it a drop in temperatures.
Across the car park, in a room on the North Stand Terrace of the stadium, more than 40 members of the local community have formed into a hive of activity, fuelled predominantly by cups of tea and chatter.
Some play table tennis on two blue tables; others sit in groups of four and five and put the world and their local football club to rights. They have just finished playing bingo. Soon, a quiz will begin, chaired by health & wellbeing coordinator Amy Lewis, who teases the teams with mock accusations of cheating.
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After the grimness of Covid-19 isolation, they provide a regular weekly spot where members of the local community can make and maintain friendships – many of the Wednesday club have been coming for years. This winter, with its fuel and cost-of-living crises, it is also a place of literal warmth as well as emotional.
The United Kingdom is the sixth largest economy in the world, but if a society is only as healthy as its most vulnerable and its least financially secure, that economy is broken. The rise in inflation, financial impact of Covid-19, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and post-Brexit trade issues have combined to make the UK’s cost-of-living crisis the most affected of any advanced economy.
Ninety-two per cent of adults in Great Britain reported an increase in their cost of living in November-December 2022, according to the Office for National Statistics. The Office for Budget Responsibility estimates the biggest post-tax fall in real household income since records began in 1956.
These numbers can often feel intangible; the better proof lies in individual stories than national averages. Shelter UK, the housing and homelessness charity, calculate that 2.5 million renters are behind or constantly struggling to pay rent.
Millions of people in the UK feel as if their heads are being plunged below the water. The supposed hacks – putting on an extra jumper, buying an airfryer, leaving the curtains closed – aren’t enough. People don’t need tips, they need help.
Fifty miles away from the Pirelli, Rotherham United launched a campaign specifically to combat the cost-of-living crisis, working with their own Community Sports Trust on “Every Miller Matters”.
Five days a week, split into sessions for teenagers, 18-35s, over-35s, over-55s and families with children, the club opens rooms in the New York Stadium where anyone is invited to use the club’s heating, power and WiFi, whether that be to have a hot drink or bowl of soup, charge their mobile, watch television or simply sit and talk to others.
“As a club, we felt like we had to take action to try and help out and the ‘Every Miller Matters’ campaign encapsulates all the ways in which we thought we could alleviate some of that pressure,” Community Programme Manager Jonny Allen said.
“We have already hosted a couple of sessions and it has been really eye-opening to speak to people and understand just how hard certain individuals have been hit. We believe there are more people out there who could benefit from what we are offering and I would implore those individuals or families to come down and see us. There is absolutely no judgement.”
Across the country, professional clubs have opened their doors to their communities. Manchester United’s Red Cafe was open for three hours every Monday and Wednesday in December, for people to get warm, enjoy hot drinks and snacks and socialise.
Brentford’s Community Sports Trust’s “warm space” is open every Monday morning to offer unlimited internet access and hot drinks. i spoke to Northampton Town and Sheffield Wednesday about their own similar schemes. These are merely a few of many. Across the football pyramid, clubs have done their bit.
Our 'warm space’ provision for local residents returns tomorrow!
— Brentford FC CST (@BrentfordFCCST) January 8, 2023
Offering a place where residents can access a range of activities and refreshments
Find out more herehttps://t.co/ZgQbC8XHx4 pic.twitter.com/34qO7u3mFr
Not all of these warm spaces are full. At Brentford, one of 30 warm hubs created in the London Borough of Hounslow this winter, attendance is still low. But that’s not the point: the idea is not necessarily to have these spaces full, but to have them available and for people to know that they are there so that when members of the local community have a need, it is answered.
“We are hoping as word-of-mouth spreads in the New Year that we will start to see more people through our doors every week,” Brentford Community Trust’s health & wellbeing manager Emily Donovan explains.
The same was true when they successfully ran a Refugees Welcome Hounslow Christmas Party that was attended by 55 refugees from countries across the Middle East and Africa. The idea, after all, is to be a pillar of the community and a safe space: open doors, friendly faces, practical help.
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At elite level, clubs can often feel separate from the local community: vast palaces of entertainment erected at enormous cost and home to enterprises that command loyalty from global fanbases. But at their heart, each share a common theme.
Although to many supporters, a football club is relevant only on matchday, even that is significant: these are usually the place in every town or city where the most people congregate en masse regularly.
For others, matchday is less important than a Wednesday morning. During the week, a club is a place of support and companionship. It might sound a little twee, but that makes a greater difference to a greater number than what happens between 3pm and 5pm on a Saturday.
Football’s creeping gentrification over the last 30 years has made attending matches a luxury experience, which in turn threatened to freeze out large swathes of the working-class support.
Lower down, ticket prices are lower but when money is tight, attending is not a possibility for many. If a football club loses those people as traditional supporters, seeking to help them when times are hard is the right choice. It flips the definition of “supporter” on its head – club supporting people rather than people supporting club – but in doing so increases the club’s family tree.
At Rotherham, Allen is keen to point out that their schemes are not simply a reaction to the recent crisis. Rotherham United have recognised that deprivation is – and always will be – an issue amongst some communities, and they are determined to help as much as they can to alleviate some of that pressure.
But it’s particularly important this winter. “We are open to anyone for two hours every Monday,” says Phillip Smith, CEO of Northampton Town’s Community Trust. “There are people in our community, particularly the elderly, who don’t have a regular income beyond their pension payments, who may be unable to react to the cost-of-living crisis.
“The cost of putting the heating on is a challenge for them. They may be choosing between having a heater on and eating a hot meal. It doesn’t have to be a fancy, complicated programme. It just needs to provide an answer to that problem. We’re here to support the whole community. A football club is about a great deal more than what happens on the pitch on a Saturday.”
This week at our #ExtraTimeHubs sessions we were visited by musician & respiratory coach Chris who took the group through some exercises
— Northampton Town FC Community Trust (@NTFC_CT) January 17, 2023
They were also treated to a presentation from new partners Cummins who are funding future activities!@EFLTrust | @EFL | #EFLWeekofAction pic.twitter.com/GYbr70t6Hu
There is a vaguely karmic element to all of this. As with any social institution, a symbiotic relationship exists between the organisation and the people that rely upon it. If the community appreciates that the football club supported them in a time of need, the feeling will be reciprocal.
A lasting bond is maintained that goes beyond buying match tickets. The club moves closer to the bosom of the local area.
But on a cold Wednesday morning, and on many other mornings and afternoons like it across the hardest winter in a generation, nobody is thinking about the bigger picture and they’re certainly not planning how the football club they work for might benefit in the long run.
At Burton, Amy is telling people that the first iPhone was released in 2007, to groans from the quizzers. Emily is working out how best to spread the message through word-of-mouth. All we speak to say the same thing: it’s about putting smiles on the faces of people who need one. That is how you make a difference.
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