Football Focus Issue 54 | Page 67

Dagenham United This Season “We are happy with how our season has gone to date; we measure our success on just retaining all our teams and ensuring an ethos of football for all which we cater for. We would like to get a team into a Cup Final or even to win a league. It gives everyone the opportunity to attend games and support the club. It also gives players in our teams a bit of “I want to do that” so a little success breeds a good mentality.” Community “We are an FA charter standard community club and try to recruit from the local area with our coaches and 80% of our players come from the local Borough. Our club is dependent on our youth, we actively encourage U15 players to get involved in young leaders courses, becoming qualified referees and helping out our mini kickers programme which brings our young players into teams.” Challenges “We live in a very multi-cultural area where affluence is not very easily achieved so money the cost of facilities, pitches, affiliations, fines kits, training equipment etc. all have to be met and it is an on-going saga trying to balance the equipment/facility/kits as they all need pots of money that need to be budgeted for.” Ambitions “My own ambition for my club is that over the next 5 years we grow our youth section to 35 teams. We also want to grow our girls section to facilitate a female only night of training get a sustained amount of teams and a development officer for each section to keep the growth going. We are increasing our adult section to go into a Step 7 league, the U21 will be in the youth section of that league whilst I want to have teams playing on Saturdays and Sundays to allow good exit routes for our players. And within the next 5 years I want an adult veteran team and an adult women team. The future is bright.” www.sportip.biz 67