Summer break? There’s not much sign of one at Eastbourne Borough FC

Outgoing Community Manager Tim Brown, who has been involved with the club since 2016, has – with his club colleagues – announced a “Sports Festival 2024”. It includes Open Day events and free sessions in ten different sports and activities. They range from youth football to walking football, from Man v Fat to stoolball, and from disability football to darts!

The Festival runs for a fortnight from 1st to 16th June. The headline act, as they say at all the best rock festivals, is a Saturday in June when the stadium and main 3G pitch are turned over to a multi-team youth tournament: World Cup Day. More of that in a moment…

Tim Brown may technically be “outgoing” – he is returning to a Special Needs teaching role at Heathfield School – but he remains closely involved at the Lane, especially with the Disability Football section, which has nearly forty weekly participants. And his successor in the post is Shay Hollobone, an accomplished footballer himself who has grown up through the Borough youth system. Shay’s father Andy is also a well-known figure and a senior coach at Priory Lane.

Shay takes over a thriving department, including regular engagement with seven local schools, both primary and secondary. It offers not only sports coaching, but also mentoring and tuition – and a unique innovative “Game On” scheme – which engages with marginalised students and rewards their improved attendance and behaviour, or improved school work grades, with stadium tours, participation in first team training sessions, and Q&A meetings with manager Adam Murray. Borough have partnerships with local organisations from Eastbourne Foodbank to Friends of Eastbourne Hospital and the Children’s Respite Trust.

The club has published an impressive 25-page Borough in the Community blueprint – fittingly subtitled “Football for Good”. It has attracted grant support from the National League Trust – and quite simply, says Brown, “we want our club to set a gold standard for community involvement by clubs at Borough’s level”.

By happy chance, Borough’s 2023 World Cup Day last June was the first Priory Lane event that new owner Simon Leslie attended. Your Herald reporter recalls standing alongside him on the terraces, looking across a 3G pitch that was a cascade of colour, noise and happy activity. “My aim is a community club in the broadest sense,” mused Simon, “and what I’m looking at now is exactly that!”

The concept is simple, but simply wonderful. You take a complete range of young participants – ages, abilities and disabilities – and you mix them, not at random but into carefully planned and balanced teams. Each of those teams pulls on the shirts – some proper replica kits, and some inventive improvisations! – of nations from Spain to Italy and England to Brazil. And everyone plays everyone – well, not quite, but each team has a full and frantic programme of small-sided matches, throughout a long exhausting morning.

Does it matter who wins? Well, yes, but it matters much more that everyone takes part, everyone has glorious fun, and – crucially - every player helps his or her team-mate. Mums. Dads and Grandmas cheer them to the echo. And if you ever needed your faith restored – in humanity, and in the true values of sport – then the Borough World Cup Day is not to be missed.

This year’s event, slightly rebranded as World Cup Wellness Day, is on Saturday 15th June. The exponential growth of Borough’s own youth section means that this year, the event cannot be simply a “Come All Ye”. If your young footballers would like to take part, they need to sign up with the Borough youth programme. But all spectators and extended family members are welcome to look in on the day.

They will find as many as twelve matches kicking off simultaneously – on Tim Brown’s klaxon! – and they will meet the entire Sports community, including first-team players who take a role assisting the disabled youngsters.

Full details and dates of Borough's Sports Festival 2024 can be found on the club website.