A midsummer night’s team

As FC United embarks on its twentieth year we reflect on life at the club during the summer and, in particular, the impressive progress made by staff and volunteers in implementing the club’s ambitious football strategy, launched at May’s General Meeting, across all our football teams.

A football ground feels different during the close season – calmer, less frantic, like the whole place is getting chance to breathe a little. If you were an artist, a decade ago, trying to create an impression of what FC United’s Broadhurst Park football ground might look like out of season then the end product might have been pretty close to the scene around the ground on the warm summer evening of Monday 24^th June.

The 3G pitch adjacent to the ground, basking in evening sunshine, was alive with kids playing football whilst a gentle breeze rustled the leaves on the surrounding trees. Meanwhile parents, relatives and friends were either watching on or perched on the boardwalk wall, in front of the ground’s main entrance, fiddling with their phones. Behind the St Mary’s Road End terrace a learner driver gently manoeuvred a small car into a parking space under the watchful eye of a driving instructor. A football club providing a source of recreation and learning for its local community and a reminder of why a works football team, which went on to do alright, was formed in 1878 barely a mile away from where these kids were playing.

According to the latest data on exercise levels only 40 percent of children and young people across Greater Manchester do the recommended daily average of at least 60 minutes of physical activity with around one-third averaging below 30 minutes. And around one in four children across the conurbation leave primary school overweight or obese. Access to green space and opportunities to exercise is important. And it’s one of the reasons why FC United was formed – to encourage young local participation on the pitch and off it. Since the introduction of a new online booking system earlier this year the hiring out of the 3G pitch has increased significantly with plenty of regular bookings from local schools.

Inside the ground’s main entrance, as a few people waited in the lobby for the open section of the final board meeting of the 2023-24 year to begin, others were arriving for a football association meeting upstairs in the function room. Meanwhile as the doors to the dressing rooms occasionally opened as staff went about their business, it was possible to glimpse the pitch which now, unlike on the day of the FA Cup Final a few weeks ago, has grass on it. New drains have been installed, it’s been renovated and seeded and some welcome sunshine has provided decent growing conditions. There’s still plenty of work to do on the pitch but we’ve come a long way in a relatively short period – from brownfield to greenfield in barely a month.

Once the board meeting had kicked off we learned, amongst other things, about the steps the club has been taking over the last few weeks to implement its ambitious football strategy that was unveiled to co-owners at the General Meeting in May. The progress made so far is impressive and has been led by a rejuvenated football committee.

The trials for the new under-21 development team were over-subscribed and there has also been plenty of interest in the new under-17s team. A new recruitment department is up and running and we already have twelve scouts who are focused on recruiting talented young footballers from across Greater Manchester. The aim is to develop a pipeline of homegrown talent that can feed the men’s and women’s first teams in keeping with the tradition of red-shirted Manchester football teams.

We’re well aware that we’ve not got the biggest football budgets in our respective men’s and women’s leagues but, rather than bemoan our predicament, we know that there are things that we can do to make ourselves more competitive in all other aspects of the game – the ‘marginal gains’ in the modern sporting parlance – and we are keen for Broadhurst Park to become ‘a centre of excellence’.

As mentioned at May’s General Meeting, one of our aspirations through our schools and grassroots engagement programme is to become an umbrella club for local grassroots football clubs and the feedback we’ve been receiving on this programme so far suggests that we’ve got something special to offer. The parents of a member of the Prestwich Marauders’ girls’ football team recently recounted how when the team was invited to Broadhurst Park for a match last season they were particularly impressed with how Jennie Swarbrick engaged with all the girls and made them feel special and valued. The parents described their visit to the club as “not just enjoyable but also memorable” and something which had left a lasting impression on the entire Marauders’ girls’ team. It’s feedback like this that gives us a real sense of how we can change lives through football.

As co-owners may already be aware, the club has taken a number of steps to develop women’s and girls’ football including: the board’s decision to ensure the women’s team plays all its league and FA cup games in the stadium next season despite relegation; paying players for the first time in our history; establishing a new women’s development squad; committing to developing a women’s academy team; partnering with Moston Juniors to offer girls’ junior football next season for the first time; and introducing a number of community football activities for women and girls. And, additionally, we are supporting school holiday camps, which will particularly benefit hard-pressed families.

We also learned at June’s board meeting of the extent of Barrow AFC’s investment in improving the grass pitches adjacent to the 3G pitch since they began using Broadhurst Park as their training base. This substantial investment has benefited not only FC United but also our junior football partners Moston Juniors whose teams use these pitches throughout the year and have long struggled with poor drainage.

As part of our football strategy we are also focusing on strengthening our relationship with Moston Juniors and also providing young players with first team opportunities. Only a couple of months ago Elliot Wilkinson, one of four academy players to make his debut in the men’s first team last year, celebrated his eighteenth birthday on the shores of Lake Garda whilst playing in the finals of a European tournament that FC went on to win. And there was a lovely moment on that trip when the hundreds of FC fans who had made the journey to northern Italy serenaded Elliot with choruses of ‘happy birthday’. A fantastic experience for any young footballer.

As the board meeting drew to a close, and those observing the open session had chance to comment, a relatively new co-owner, observing a board meeting for the first time, declared that he was full of admiration for everyone working at the club and reckoned that the club is in a much better position that he expected it to be in when he became a co-owner. He explained that he is a longstanding Manchester United fan who left Old Trafford, and fell out of love with football, when the Glazers took over in 2005 and only began following FC United two years ago after being mithered to come along to a match by some of his mates who are FC fans. Since then he has fallen in love with the club and feels that it has a bright future. Proof that, even nearly two decades on, we can still offer a refuge for United fans fed up with top flight football.

Sometimes the hype around big football can feel relentless. Every game is huge. Every season or tournament is sensational and the best one ever. Every player is a hero or zero. And every formation is analysed to death. And yet the stakes are arguably highest much further down the football pyramid where clubs battle just to stay afloat. The last few years have been tough for FC United (as they have been for pretty much all non-league football clubs) but thanks to a phenomenal amount of hard work behind the scenes by staff and volunteers to professionalise the way that we operate it feels like we can look forward to the coming season with renewed optimism.

Nick, Warren, Bhavna, Dave, Matt, Paul, and Simon

FC United of Manchester Board