It’s a long standing tradition that Football Clubs are the beating heart of their local communities. Change-makers and a powerful collective that positively impact people’s lives, Clubs continue to deliver initiatives that change and saves lives on a daily basis.

Whether it’s through refugee football sessions, knife crime education, disability football or tackling loneliness through coffee mornings for the elderly, EFL Clubs are providing local solutions to local challenges.

One Club where community is at the heart both on and off the pitch is Ipswich Town. Led by Chief Executive, Mark Ashton, community is an ethos followed by every person associated with Ipswich Town and a culture running through the Club from the top down.

“My passion and belief is that Football Clubs can impact their local communities in ways that no other organisation can,” Ashton told the PFA, in a recent interview.

With a one Club, one town, one community mentality, the Suffolk Club does things differently. Community engagement is not just delivered off the pitch, it is a huge part of the first-team manager and players’ day-to-day lives too.

With first team players on the Board of the Ipswich Town Foundation, it provides a direct link between Football Club and Club Community Organisation, with the player representation allowing first-hand insight into the work being delivered in the local community.

Head of Ipswich Town Foundation, Dan Palfrey, explains: “The players’ job is to drive the agenda back into the first-team dressing room and reiterate the importance of the work being done, and I’ve seen first hand that it really is working and paying dividends.

“The relationship works both ways, the players are the conduit between the Foundation and the first team. As Mark [Ashton] has mentioned before, when we sign players for this Football Club, they’re told from the off that they are expected to give back to the community and how important that work is, setting the tone from the start.

“And the players take a genuine interest, too. It’s not a chore for them and that’s because of the type of players we sign. They come back inspired and the work they do in the community has an impact on them just as much as it does on the people in the community.”

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First-team player Conor Chaplin and Ipswich Town Women forward Natasha Thomas joined the Foundation Board in 2021, with the aim of driving the Club’s presence in the community, while providing added structure and vision to the Foundation.

While football may have changed over the years, Clubs remain pillars of their communities and players themselves have long understood that they are the most powerful and immediate representatives of a Club’s commitment to its communities. With more than 48,000 player engagements taking place in the last three seasons, players share the belief that they are role models with responsibilities to support and advocate, and in Ipswich Town’s case, the support given to the Ipswich community isn’t a tokenistic gesture. They demonstrate a real desire to make a positive difference.

“It was a really positive move by our Club,” Ipswich forward, Chaplin, says. “Our voice as players is important and we can set an example and set the standard of what should be done in the community.

“It’s a learning experience for me being on the Board, but it’s great to be in those meetings every week and hear how passionate people are in wanting to make a change. It’s something the Chief Executive is really passionate about and I think success on the pitch comes with success off it, it all goes hand in hand.”

Chief Executive Ashton believes community is at the heart of football and outlines the key building blocks necessary to generate support from both the team and the wider community.

“It’s always been my undying passion,” he said in a recent interview with the PFA.

“I tend to buck the trend. For example, when I appointed Kieran McKenna, I knew he was a good coach, but I was more interested in what his values are, what his work ethic is like, will he fit into the community ethos and will he genuinely believe in that and buy into it with his team of players?

“To me, what mattered most was whether his values match those of this Club off the pitch as well as on it.”

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This aligned thinking comes from a change in ownership at Ipswich Town, who are now funded by United States pension fund, ORG, and whose interest in the community is as great as that on the pitch.

“The owners might call me about results on the pitch, but they will also call me and ask for a report on our community engagement,” Aston added.

“They want to see what the players have done, what the manager has done and what we as a Club have done. They want to see how we’re impacting the lives of those in the community, how we’re working to reduce crime, improve mental health, what we’re doing with refugees and so on. It’s a very different ownership approach.”

And this was summed up in the Summer when the Ipswich squad received a visit from a former Arizona policeman, who suffered life-changing injuries while on duty.

“He was one of the most inspiration people I’ve ever met,” Ashton added. “He was horrifically injured but managed to continue living his life and progress. He is a pension holder of the organisation that funds Ipswich Town, so we are who he represents and that’s what I tell the players and staff.”

As a reminder of the community they represent, the words ‘run towards adversity’ feature around Ipswich Town’s training ground and are sown into the first-team kit, and it is a set of values Ashton believes will see the Club succeed in years to come.

“When a player joins this Football Club, the manager does all the football stuff. But I take them for a walk around the pitch and I talk to them about their involvement in community. I tell them exactly what is going to be expected of them and what they’re signing up to. And then I say, ‘if you don’t want to engage and genuinely work with our local community and that isn’t for you, it doesn’t matter how good you are on the pitch, join another Club’, because they’re not the players we want here.

“Those values are what I believe will see us run towards adversity on and off the pitch when difficult times come.”

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This feature originally appeared in the summer 2023 edition of the EFL Magazine.


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