Community Goals: Channeling Football to Enrich Lives

Men’s mental health is a troubling issue in Scotland. As it worsens, the country is struggling to get to grips with providing support to those who need it. More men are reporting poor mental health than ever before, and tragically, more are taking their lives. In 2023, 590 took their own lives – a six per cent increase on the previous year, according to National Records Scotland.  

Helping men to speak up is one of the first and most challenging hurdles to address in these rising figures and providing the right platform for people to feel comfortable to do this is essential. In the last few years, Scottish football clubs and their community trusts have begun to reach out to people in their communities, offering them safe spaces where they can share their feelings.  

Aberdeen Football Club Community Trust’s (AFCCT) Changing Room project is doing just that. Set up for men aged 30-64, the 12-week programme takes place at Aberdeen FC’s stadium, Pittodrie, and helps them self-manage their mental health while also giving them access to a strong support network.  

Andrew, a recent participant in the project, says it has “completely changed everything” for him.  
“I’ve had issues with depression and state of mind for all my adult life. Looking back now, there’s things I know I haven’t addressed.” 

He describes the project as “an avenue” for him to address his mental health and “get better”.  
The trust says the football environment offers comfort and safety and is a gateway for more men to be open about their mental health. It’s just one way that football is being used as a vehicle to help communities across Scotland address a multitude of social issues.  

Liz Bowie, chief executive of the AFCCT, says projects like this are proving successful because of the unique accessibility of football and how community-focused the game is here. “People want to be around the game,” she says.  

Football engages Scottish fans more than any other country in Europe. A report by Uefa – the game’s European governing body – published last year found that, on average, 18 in 1,000 Scots attended top-flight premiership games in 2023. The closest to that was in Portugal, which had an average of 10 per 1,000.  

It also found that nearly 3.8 million fans attended top-flight matches in Scotland last season and the average league attendance was 16,500, which is the seventh highest on the continent, despite being the 29th most populous country in Europe.  

It’s clear we love the game. Bowie describes it as a “common language” that reaches across all kinds of social barriers.  

“You can be from a middle-class area or a challenging area, but get a group together talking that common language and you’ll find there’s no difference between them. People feel relaxed around it, it’s a common interest, and I do think here in Aberdeen it’s so intrinsic. This city’s temperature goes up and down according to how we are doing on the pitch, and of late it’s been somewhat challenging. But one consistent thing is that the community trust is punching above its weight. 

“It offers a safe space, being able to come into a stadium. There’s something about it that takes away from some of the difficulty of going to talk about mental health or because you can’t afford to heat your house, or whatever the issue is. There is no judgement.” 

Jordan Allison, the charity manager of the Kilmarnock Community Sports Trust (KCST), tells Holyrood that football community trusts have experienced big changes in the last 10 years. Initially, his and many other charities were set up to provide free football sessions to young people. But that has changed dramatically as social issues have worsened across the country.  

“Where we are now is so different from where we started in 2015. We now support over 11,000 people in Ayrshire from age three to 103. I’ve just finished a session of our Football Memories programme, which helps people with Alzheimer’s talk about football.  

“We’ve found so often that the people that participate in that group are able to come together and discuss games that happened in the 60s, despite maybe not being able to remember what they had for their breakfast.” 

The Scottish Professional Football League (SPFL), the organisation that oversees the four leagues that the top 42 clubs compete in, set up its own trust in 2009 to help clubs deliver charitable and community-based initiatives, using football as a tool to promote health, education, inclusion and wellbeing. And the growth of football community trusts has been staggering since then. In 2013, 12 of those 42 teams had trusts set up – now there are 41. Allison says not enough people “know about what’s being achieved off the pitch in Scottish football”. 

In the past few years there have been lots of successful initiatives designed by individual club trusts in partnership with non-football organisations. Many of these programmes have since been rolled out to other trusts across Scotland to maximise the benefit of good ideas in local areas. Many are stadium-based programmes, like the Changing Room and Football Memories, that focus on issues like mental health and diseases like dementia. 

The recent introduction of a community hub by AFCCT, which serves as a touch point for many of the services available in local authorities that aren’t being accessed by the people who need them most, is the most recent example of an initiative receiving national rollout.  

Opened in 2022 after the charity secured grant funding from the SPFL Trust, it was initially set up to help members of the local community who were struggling with the energy and cost-of-living crisis. What was supposed to be a six-week project offering a warm place and a free meal evolved into so much more, and has continued to this day. 

Bowie, who was at the heart of setting up the programme, tells Holyrood: “We wanted to play on the fact that people were coming into the stadium and not just a warm space. They could get a free hot meal, tea, coffee, and Wi-Fi. 

“We quickly saw that the people coming in were very vulnerable and lacking the confidence to seek help for things like paying bills and accessing services online. We realised we needed to bring that expertise in and so brought in people from the Department of Work and Pensions, the NHS, and Aberdeen City Council, making the hub a one-stop shop. And that continues.” 

The SPFL Trust recognised the unique role the hub played in connecting vulnerable people with the correct help, and with funding from SGN it will roll out 10 hubs across Scottish football stadiums to provide similar assistance to people that need the support this year. 

Nicky Reid, chief executive of the SPFL Trust, suggests there is an opportunity for projects like this “to deliver against national objectives by dealing with them at a local level”. She says the reason so many trusts have been established in the last 10 years, as well as the rapid expansion of their operations, is in response to increasing demand for services and suggests the expansion of community hubs can help to tackle it. 

“These hubs work because there is a no-wrong-door approach; you shouldn’t have to repeat your story 10 times to 10 different organisations. Unfortunately some of those organisations carry a stigma with them, people tend not to like going to the Job Centre, GP clinics, Citizens Advice, or debt advice agencies. And what the football environment offers is a stigma-free place to deal with those issues. 

“This isn’t a place where there’s a whole bunch of pop-ups, each organisation with a different table. The only reason you’d know someone was from one of these agencies is because the staff at the club would get to know your circumstances and suggest who might be good to speak with. And that dispels a lot of the uncertainty and anxiety around connecting with services.” 

Rolling programmes like this out across as many of Scotland’s 42 SPFL clubs’ trusts is crucial in reaching as many people as possible. Reid tells Holyrood that over 4.5 million Scots live within 10 miles of an SPFL ground, meaning football trust services are able to reach over 80 per cent of the country.  

But while trusts continue to expand support for as many people in their communities as possible, the issue of financial sustainability in football has caused issues for funding in the past. Reid says she knows of one grant funder that paused support to one of the associated charities because the club entered administration.  

“That’s unfair because our community trusts work incredibly hard to be transparent, particularly because they are associated with football.” 

In the last 12 months, Inverness Caledonian Thistle and Dumbarton entered administration. This follows a worrying trend: in the last 20 years, eight clubs have entered administration, two of which liquidated. It has raised the question of whether tighter football governance should be enacted by the Scottish Government to match the Football Governance Bill, which is making its way through Westminster at the time of writing. Among many things, the bill would establish an independent football regulator which would provide oversight aims to promote financial sustainability. 

The Scottish Government has been actively considering the establishment of an independent football regulator. In January last year, the Scottish Government led a debate at Holyrood on enhancing the game through governance, finance and the potential benefit from independent oversight. Then, in May, it convened a roundtable to discuss the idea with supporters and other stakeholders. 

But SNP MSP George Adam, who chaired the St Mirren Independent Supporters Association, the fan group that successfully bought a controlling share of St Mirren FC, doesn’t believe following the proposed English model is the most effective way to go for Scotland because of the financial importance on fans attending games, while other leagues rely heavily on multi-million pounds TV deals. 

He is advocating for more fan ownership, and community control of clubs. It’s a model that is already working in Scotland. According to a report by the Fair Game Index in August last year, Motherwell, St Mirren and Heart of Midlothian – Scotland’s three biggest fan-owned clubs – were in the top 10 best-run clubs in the UK.  

The Scottish Government has acknowledged the importance of increased fan ownership, and in May 2023 it launched the Fan Bank, a program designed to empower supporters to acquire ownership stakes in their clubs. Its first interest-free loan has provided a £350,000 to the Falkirk Supporters Society, allowing it to purchase 875,000 shares in Falkirk Football Club, securing approximately a 25 per cent ownership stake. 

With community so firmly at the heart of Scottish football, Adam says there needs to be more fan and community ownership to ensure future sustainability and allow trusts to continue their crucial work.

“The future of your club is better in your hands, rather than someone else that comes in to buy the club and thinks they know best. Let me tell you, that’s not always the been the case. 

“The reason these three fan-owned clubs are amongst the best run in the UK is because they engage with the community and have brought them on board. We need more of that.”