But Eastbourne Borough Football Club did their best to fill the void by staging itheir biggest ever annual ‘World Cup Fun Day’ at Priory Lane. Hundreds of youngsters and their families descended on the stadium to play in a football tournament to decide who lifted the World Cup trophy.
A total of 170 youth players from the club dressed up in colours representing either England, Brazil, Spain or Italy, and then battled it out in the sunshine on ten pitches playing 60 matches in total. The girls and boys taking part included three-year-olds from the club’s ‘Sports Stars’ squad right up to the under-11 squads and Spirit of Football disability team.
Families turned up to find the stadium full of flags of all colours, food, music, face painting, T-shirts on sale, exciting raffle prizes, players from the men’s and women’s first teams and even a chance to be photographed with the FA Cup, World Cup and Champions League trophies. Organiser Tim Brown explained: “Every year we always like to finish our season with a fun event for our youngest teams, so that every one of our players gets the opportunity to play in a tournament and receive a medal no matter what their ability might be. World Cup Day is all about having fun without the pressure of winning, feeling included and being part of our special Borough family which I think we once again delivered. The support from the directors and all of the club coaches has once again been tremendous this year - this has definitely been our biggest and best World Cup Day to date.”
Having witnessed a nail-biting Coaches Challenge that saw parents and coaches complete a penalty shootout for more points the youngsters were then given their medals from several of the first team players. And the festival finally concluded when winning country Italy were presented with the World Cup trophy by women’s first team manager Richard Dyson to cap a memorable morning for all. It was a shame England couldn’t ‘bring it home’ – perhaps Gareth and the lads will make up for that in Qatar later in the year! Fun day gallery: sussexworld.co.uk
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Eastbourne Borough Football Club held a successful World Cup Fun Day - their biggest event of its kind yet
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Eastbourne Borough Football Club held a successful World Cup Fun Day - their biggest event of its kind yet
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Eastbourne Borough Football Club held a successful World Cup Fun Day - their biggest event of its kind yet
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Eastbourne Borough Football Club held a successful World Cup Fun Day - their biggest event of its kind yet