Bootle Bucks Inclusion Football Club is an inclusion football team based in the area of Bootle. Bootle Bucks Inclusion FC was set up in April 2018 with a view to offering football coaching to local, challenged children and adults who had little or no access to organised football sessions or a place to train, keep fit and enjoy socialising with other youngsters with similar challenges.
I spoke with one of the founders John Rice about the formation of The Bucks "We started The Bucks after a chat between me and John Doran (another co-chairman) in late 2017. We talked about the lack of football provision in the area for kids with a disability especially for the kids we were working with at the time. In Sefton the disability football had stopped for a couple of years and we were confident we could get a handful of players to make a team so went for it with help from John Callaghan, Gareth Ace and Keith Woodhouse".
When asked about the aim of the Bucks, John answered "Basically to provide a football session that was fun and engaging. Hopefully we would get enough players to form a team so really the plans were initially very small as we had no idea how many kids and adults in the area would be interested."
John said about how far he feels the Bucks have come on "Hard to put into words really how we feel about how far the Bucks have come and what we see week in week out. The joy, the confidence, the friendship and the football development is outstanding from all our players.
The aims for the future our clear "We aim to grow and grow. There is no end to what we do. We will be as big as we can and aim to get as many of those players out there that have ever thought they couldn't be part of a team into one."
From an initial membership of 16 people attending the first session, the Bucks now have over 200 active members aged from 4 years old to 41 years old
Bootle Bucks Inclusion have teams playing regularly in the Liverpool Ability Counts League at Under 13, Under 16 and Open Age.
The Bucks were already making waves in their first year as they were nominated for the North West Football Awards, a prestigious professional football award and they the only non-professional club in attendance, and were able to win the 'Promoting Inclusion' award, a great achievement for such a young club and one of which everyone are extremely proud of for everyone associated. The Bucks also won the LCFA Disability Club of the Year in the summer of 2019 which further proved to us that Bootle Bucks Inclusion FC was heading in the right direction and providing a valuable service for our children and parents.
In the summer of 2021, another massive stride to success as the Bucks hosted their own disability tournament. They were using Bootle FC’s official stadium, also there training pitch, by dividing the field into many 5-a-side pitches for the tournament.
There were a total of 58 teams participating ranging from Northern Ireland, Wales, Hampshire and Yorkshire who all took part in the hugely successful inclusion tournament which was also covered by Sky Sports.
Later on this month, The Inclusion Bucks have once again been nominated for the prestigious North West Award for 'Promoting Inclusion' where they will come up against professional clubs such as Everton Football Club and Preston North End Community and Education Trust and other nominees include Foundation 92, Creative Football and Liverpool County FA.
With the right backing, Inclusion Football can go a long way for years to come.
Add comment
Comments