To be in the bowels of West Ham’s London Stadium last week was to experience the distilled essence of the modern, multi-billion pound Premier League behemoth.
Outside, all the talk was of the corruption allegations that had led to a fresh wave of hand-wringing over the greed and grotesque sums in the game.
In the stands of the former Olympic Stadium the echoes of the issues caused by the club’s move from Green Street to Westfield still reverberated. But on the pitch a frenzy of activity is testament to one of the more welcome spin-offs of the billions that have poured into the Premier League from the pockets of fans paying for television subscriptions, replica shirts and tickets.
Beneath cloudless skies representatives from some of the disability schemes funded centrally by a new Premier League initiative were practising a range of sports, Michael Owen and Owen Hargreaves were larking about as they prepared to play football blindfold and some of the more inspirational characters inside those clubs were talking about what they do week in, week out.
You may believe the amount Premier League clubs put into their community schemes merely represents the crumbs from the captain’s table. Or perhaps you buy the Premier League’s portrayal of a virtuous circle in which the cash poured into “good causes” increases as their TV rights bounty goes up and everybody wins. What is undeniable is that Paul Kelly, the Manchester City disability officer who began volunteering for the club when he lost his job as a bricklayer and now oversees a programme that reaches more than 1,000 disabled people per month, and many others are doing inspirational work.
From a programme that now reaches 44 special schools in central and greater Manchester to representative sides that are part of an attempt to grow disabled leagues in the area, Kelly is a persuasive advocate for the power of Premier League clubs to reconnect with the communities they sit in.
“It’s amazing and there are still many ways and means it can grow. I’ve got so many ideas and sometimes I get pulled back on my lead. You can see what Man City has done for the programme and the staff and the participants,” said Kelly, who had gone from taking sessions for six kids on tatty, ripped astroturf eight years ago to having use of City’s money-no-object Etihad Campus.
“It’s only going to build and get better. We’re still building and still developing. We want to grow and do something special with our disability team, just as we do with our ladies team and the first team and everything else we do.”
The event at the London Stadium was designed to unveil a new partnership between BT Sport and the Premier League that will ensure that every club has a dedicated disability officer. Many, such as Manchester City, have one already but Kelly said the funding would allow him to do more and with greater certainty.
When the Premier League unveiled its £8.3bn TV deal it was forced on to the back foot by criticism of how much of that cash would find its way to grassroots football, to community programmes and to the rest of the game.
Stung by the criticism, it pledged at least £1bn would make its way outside the Premier League, though the vast majority of that will go into funding parachute and “solidarity” payments to Football League clubs.
Richard Scudamore, watching on, is also right to say the Premier League clubs often do not get the credit for the community work they do undertake. Every club has several Paul Kellys, going above and beyond to use the power of football and the unique geographical position of clubs in the heart of their cities to the benefit of their local communities. The question will always be whether they could do more and whether those that do less can be persuaded of the benefits. “There are only two ways of doing more. You either do more of the same or you try and expand the brief and expand the platform,” said Scudamore.
“You know how proud the clubs have been of their Kicks programme, which is our social inclusion programme, of their health programme, of Premier League 4 Sport programmes. If you go back over the last 15 years there is a huge layering-up of capacity within clubs to do this kind of work.”
And yet, even as they were launching the new scheme, the minister for disabled people was pointing out that only seven clubs had fully accessible toilet facilities at their grounds. “It is a simple thing, relatively inexpensive to rectify and a barrier that for some of your fans is insurmountable to overcome to watch their team play a home game,” said Penny Mordaunt.
Clubs have also come under fire for failing to provide sufficient accessible facilities, promising after significant pressure to meet official guidelines by the start of next season. “Our clubs are trying to reach that higher standard, they’re making huge progress and there’s an enormous amount of work going on. Our aim is to get as close to, if not over, those guidelines by next August. It’s absolutely the right thing to do,” said Scudamore.
Martin Sinclair, the older brother of Celtic’s Scott, played for Team GB’s cerebral palsy side in the 2012 Paralympics and is now working with Southampton’s Foundation to establish a local pan-disability league. He says it is impossible to overstate the impact Premier League clubs can have, recalling how hard it was for him to find a way into the game at the age of seven or eight.
“When I walked in no one knew what to do, what to say. Hopefully we can get people off their sofas and into disability sport and playing football,” he said. “Southampton have workshops to understand what they need as coaches and get it across to other disability people, to understand how to get people involved.”
