How Hamilton Academical have helped give hope to the community
Hamilton showing others the way with a far-reaching community programme which helps to improve and save lives
THE man sitting across from me is called Jason who, with dignity and a shattering honesty, opens up about his past problems with drug addiction. He asks not for sympathy, just a chance for his voice to be heard and a cause, if that is the right word, to be recognised.
“If it wasn’t for Hamilton Accies I really don’t know where my life would be,” he admits. The sentence isn’t finished but it’s clear what he means. If it were not for this Scottish football club then he would still be mired in the horror of addiction or dead.
Hamilton Academical are doing something far more than trying to win football matches. They are saving and changing lives.
I arrive at New Douglas Park to talk about a community award the club have been nominated for. I leave having been reminded what a football club can be and indeed what they all should strive to be.
Cat McRoberts, the club’s Community Trust Manager, is my point of contact. A force of nature is the excellent Cat, one of life’s natural enthusiasts, and we meet to talk about their Community Outreach programme which really is something else.
Set up by the CEO, Colin McGowan, New Douglas Park is the base for too many projects to mention here but includes the Blameless Children’s Charity, which caters for sons and daughters within families dealing with addiction, the veterans’ charity, Soldiers off the Street, and many others which focus on the disadvantaged and vulnerable in the local area, of which there are too many. “The community trust was established in 2004 and created to be the charitable arm of the club to meet with the community. They were going quite well but then Colin took over as CEO and his vision was fantastic,” Cat tells me.
“I think it comes down to the fact we do care about the communities and allowing them to use our facilities when the stadium is closed benefits everyone in the community.
“It is hard work but it’s not as hard as the daily lives of those people we try to support. You need to look at it from that perspective and count your own blessings. The long hours and stress aren’t easy but if it means that one family, one child benefits then as a human being, it’s the only thing you can do, isn’t it?”
Cat takes me on a tour and that’s when I meet Jason, who I like a lot.
“I was a drug addict and went into recovery two years ago,” he revealed. “I got to nine months clean but hit a really bad patch in my life. Basically, I tried to kill myself. I was lucky enough I had good people around me that helped me.
“I went to a rehab programme, got a better understanding about my addiction and through that I had to do volunteer work and, because I came to a fellowship meeting at the club, I asked if I could volunteer here.
“That has been me here since last year. I graduated from my rehab in May and was asked if I could coach the kids here with additional support needs.
“I do that every week, I took them to their very first tournament the other day and I’ve now been offered a job. I am trusted, which is a big thing. When I was caught up in my addiction, nobody trusted me.”
Jason’s story is just one of many successes.
Behind one of the goals, beside where the first-team are playing football tennis, there is the Children’s Escape and Serenity Garden, which incredibly includes a beach. Some of the kids had never felt sand before. There are play areas everywhere, a double decker bus serves as a tuck shop, there’s crazy golf, a sensory room for kids with extra special needs. It’s simply a place for kids who have been dealt a bad hand to play, feel comfortable and supported.
Three corporate boxes were ripped out two years ago, which made the club good money, and they now host numerous support groups and all sorts of activities for kids who are as trapped as the parents who live with heroin.
This is paid for by fund-raising and the club. Grants seemingly don’t exist for this kind of work.
The project costs the club £64,000 in terms of wages, or to put it another way, that is a striker whose goals could be the difference between staying in the Premiership and relegation. However, Colin McGowan has his own take on what a football club should be. “Society, for whatever reason, has turned its back on suffering,” said Colin. “They are too caught up in their own problems. The reality is the strong have to help.
“An alcoholic or a drug addict isn’t sub-human. They are not a degenerate. You know how we talk about heartfelt sorrow for the person with cancer; alcoholism and drug addiction is an illness, it is a cancer.
“Do you think the drug addict who right now is injecting himself said when he was at school, ‘I want to be a drug addict when I grow up’. I don’t think so. The bottom line is that it doesn’t matter whether you are the son or daughter of a policeman, doctor, lawyer or an electrician. This isn’t the unemployed or the great unwashed.
The long hours and stress aren’t easy but if it means that one family, one child benefits then as a human being, it’s the only thing you can do
This goes into every single fabric of society.”
McGowan is now in full flow and during our chat I don’t know whether to hug him or put his name forward for Prime Minister.
He said: “This is in our back yard. It is pretty much being ignored. I don’t think the politicians know what to do. We have 89,000 people in prison, 8,975 in Scotland, it is £764 a week to keep a prisoner. Our preventive spend here is £5 million. We literally save the government £5m. For example, we are saving on the police because the house breakers in recovery aren’t doing that any more.”
I meet Keith “a success story” who is a volunteer. Keith is the resident artist, his mural is incredible, and is holding a chicken while talking to me. “We are going to have a petting zoo,” he says as way of explanation as we stand in a neat garden which emerged from rocks, rubble and road behind the small stand running along the size of the pitch. “It’s a beautiful place.”
Funnily enough, nobody mentions to me that the club has been shortlisted as a finalist at the Football Business Awards 2016 for their Community Programme.
As Cat said: “We are not doing this to say how great we are. We are doing this to ask other clubs, ‘Why aren’t you doing this?’”
It’s a good point and raises another one which is that the Accies prove you don’t have to be the biggest football club to be the best.