Cheltenham Town FC

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Regular readers (of Sarah's blog - see the link below) will know that our family are big supporters of grass-roots football – with my son playing for an under 10s team and my husband the hard-working manager and coach. In fact, my family are pretty much big supporters of ALL football.

I hate to use the phrase ‘for a girl’, but if I did I would say that my daughter has a remarkable football knowledge for a girl. In fact for any 8 year old. She remembers facts about football at all levels – Man Utd (which they all support, my husband IS from the North-West, so it’s allowed), Cheltenham Town (our local team) and her brother’s football team (and his rugby team too, to be honest).

League football teams all do their bit for their local area – making football available to kids whatever their backgrounds and supporting schools and charities. Cheltenham Town is no exception and seem to work really hard in the community.

Their membership scheme for kids – Junior Robins – is brilliant. For the price of a single match ticket, the Junior Robins get free entry to all games. And BOTH my younger kids are Junior Robins, because football is most definitely not just for boys. We neither encouraged or discouraged a love of football in our daughter, but she decided to love it all by herself.

At the start of every game, Cheltenham Town has a flying squad of kids waving flags to welcome the players. It might be a kids’ football team or a primary school or a dance school. Last week it was the turn of the Junior Robins and my two kids took part. And it was a fantastic experience.

It’s been years since I last went to Cheltenham Town and I’d forgotten what a lovely, friendly, family feel it has to it. My experience of football is all about bigger teams, bigger games and bigger stadiums – all very impressive, but a bit corporate and not exactly friendly.

For their admission price of exactly no pounds and their part in the flying squad, my kids got:

- T-shirts to keep
- A free drink and bar of chocolate from the snack bar (and when went to the wrong snack bar, the lad serving personally took us to the right snack bar – told you it was friendly!)

- Their names in the programme AND read out over the tannoy

- To run round the pitch waving their flags and then hold their flags up to welcome the players onto the pitch.

For a young football fan, can there be a better experience? And for a parent, how fantastic that your child gets that experience at no cost whatsoever.

I loved seeing my kids taking part and they really enjoyed the experience. I even enjoyed the game afterwards (even though Cheltenham lost).

You can keep your fancy big clubs, I’m happy with the experience and atmosphere at Cheltenham Town.

This is not a sponsored post, I just thought the experience at Cheltenham Town was fantastic.

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