Footy Grand National

by Isaac Clarke
(Portsmouth)

We came up with a great football (soccer) orientated fundraiser. Our local council organised a get active day in a local park. It was really well put together and lots of local sports clubs were encouraged to come along to do displays and recruit new team members etc. Clubs were also allowed to run any fundraiser they wished and keep the proceeds for club funds. What was nice however was that many clubs donated the money they raised to a local hospice.

We wanted to come up with a football fundraiser but "Beat The Goalie" and The game where you have to chip a ball through holes in a goal board seemed a bit old hat.

Then we thought we would do a simple obstacle course but with a football twist.

Setting up our course wasn't difficult. We had:

• A ladder fixed on its side which they had to kick the ball back and forth through all 10 rungs
  
• A kids play tunnel to kick through then crawl through after it.
  
• A plastic tarpaulin pegged down at each corner this was just lose enough to slip the ball under. You then had to kick the moving bulge in the sheet until the ball came out the other side.
  
• Some straw bales. These were arranged in a wall with a hole for the ball at the bottom. The ball was kicked through but the kicker had to scramble over.
  
• A couple of hardboards with holes cut in them for the ball to go through. These were painted up to look like goals.
  
• Some of our training marker posts to dribble in and out of.
  
• Finally there was a sort of cartoon figure of a referee holding up a red card painted on hardboard. They had to fire the ball at it from 10 metres to stop the clock.
  

This was really popular with kids between 5 and about 13. We had 2 contests going. Juniors Up to 9 years and Seniors 9 years and over. We charged 50 pence a go and timed each attempt with a stopwatch. The top 5 times and names in each category were written up on a leader board. This was a great way of getting people to have second and third goes to see if they could do just that bit better.

We also ended up having a non serious contest for the very young with parents helping their toddlers kick a ball around the course. You could do this properly another time and call it Toddler Talent or something

The other thing we had was a hooter to start each attempt. This seemed to make it more exciting at the start and I think it attracted people over to see what was going on.

Our football fundraiser was certainly a good laugh. We did make a bit of cash but mostly it was about our club being part of a community event.