Luton Town Football Club

We’ve some exciting news today for all girls who love the game, as the club have allowed us to extend our community weekend of events in May to four days at the stadium to include a Girls’ U8 to U15 Hatters Cup football tournament. 

This will be our first ever all-girl Hatters Cup, which we hope will complement our well-established boys Hatters Cup – now in its ninth year – and one of the biggest stadium tournaments in England with 120 teams taking part. 

The Girls Hatters Cup is part of our commitment to offer all girls in our area exactly the same opportunity as boys to be involved with the club, and will tie in with further opportunities to be invited to attend our Girls’ Player Development Centre established this season. The tournament will take place in the evening of Monday 22nd May, and as well as teams from our player development centre, we hope that lots of our local grass-roots girls’ clubs and local schools will take part in offering teams the opportunity of a lifetime to play on the pitch at Kenilworth Road.

If you would like to enter the Girls’ Hatters Cup then either email community@lutontown.co.uk for an application form, or give us a call at the Community office on 01582 737568.

Over the last couple of years we have received great support from the London Luton Airport Community Fund with our projects to establish youth football on some of our less well-off estates in Marsh Farm, Farley Hill and High Town. 

Luton Borough Council and Luton Airport work in partnership through the Community Youth Fund to improve the quality of life of the people of Luton, and particularly to provide positive activities for children and young people and reduce anti-social behaviour, strengthen community cohesion and improve health and promote health equality. 

Following a further application for funding we are delighted to have received further support for our latest ‘Schools Link’ project, which will seek to break down the ‘post-code’ barriers in North Luton through an early intervention sports programme for pupils in their last year of primary education. 

The project will link six primary schools in Lewsey Farm, Hockwell Ring and Marsh Farm in a programme of after school, inter-school sports days supported by curriculum PE support and hate crime workshops held at each school. 

Each of the six schools will host a visit from the other five schools over the year to take part in collapsed curriculum sports days, which will combine both fun and competitive competitions along with workshops focusing on issues around community cohesion and citizenship. 

The gang culture that exits between the LU3 and LU4 postcodes in Luton continues to persist amongst so called ‘disaffected young men’ (and some girls) on both sides of the post code line that divides the large estates of Lewsey Farm/Hockwell Ring and Marsh Farm. While there are a number of diversionary activities (some delivered by the Trust) and statutory agency initiatives aimed at these young men (mostly above the age of 14), there seems little activity to prevent this cycle of distrust and rivalry from actually developing. 

In other words, not enough time is spent on diverting young children from these estates away from antisocial behaviour until they actually begin to take part in anti-social behaviour.  

We believe our project will begin to address this by concentrating on ‘next generation’ children on the rival estates through delivering a more cohesive programme of interaction through sport that will seek to break down ‘post-code’ barriers at an earlier age. As children reach the age of more independent lifestyles, ie high school age, it is envisaged that through this project a more cohesive atmosphere has developed at primary school age which will help prevent barriers from developing in the first place. It is accepted this will take several years to achieve. 

If you would like to contribute to this project through any local action or community groups we would be delighted to hear from you by either emailing Daniel Douglas at daniel.douglas@lutontown.co.uk or giving Daniel a call at the Community office on 01582 737568.

EASTER SOCCER CAMPS 

Half-term is here! If you are one of the hundreds of youngsters who regularly attend our soccer camps during the half-term holiday, then you will already know the format and how to book and you will also probably have received the details of our soccer camps which next week are spread over all five days and all over Bedfordshire. 

However, if you’ve not tried a soccer camp before then why not come along next week? They are great fun, open to all abilities and run from 9am to 4pm each day. They are very competitively priced at £12 per day and represent great value. 

There are lots of skills training drills and mini world cup games every afternoon, and of course, everyone receives the legendary free Luton Town FC medal with the chance to meet first team players on presentation days and a great match ticket deal! 

Our courses run throughout the County from Bedford down to Luton, and Woburn down to Dunstable. 

You can download our leaflet from either the main club website or by giving us a call at the Community Office on 01582 737568 or text 07725 172345 or email soccerschool@lutontown.co.uk for further information or to book a place. We look forward to seeing you next week.