This weekend is Green Football Weekend, a time when all EFL clubs will come together to champion the importance of making small changes to make a big impact for our environment. In the lead up to this weekend, football fans all over the country have been making small changes to score ​‘green goals’ for their clubs in hope of winning the ​‘Green Football Cup’ for their team.

With us being away at Newport this weekend, we organised our Green event last week before our game against Gillingham. A few weeks prior, Brad from the Foundation went out to local schools, and delivered a workshop all about Green Football Weekend and the importance of making daily choices that can help our planet! Whilst at the school, Brad also offered the pupils the chance to come along to take part in a litter-pick of the area around the County Ground and Foundation Park, being sure to identify what is recyclable, and what isn’t! The pupils that came along did an amazing job helping to keep our area clean, collecting SIX big bags of rubbish and recycling that had been carelessly thrown on the floor or into bushes, and prevented three of those bagfulls from going to landfill. 

To show our gratitude to these young eco-warriors (and their obliging parents!) we thanked them by providing them with lunch and tickets to watch the STFC match, where the pupils were invited to take to the pitch before the game to form the guard of honour as the players came out to the applause of the crowd. 

We know this is one small gesture, against an immense challenge that we are all facing, but with initiatives like the Green Football Weekend, those 72 small gestures, become something much larger, and if we all keep working together then we can really make a difference. 

Thank you so much to the staff at the schools that we visited, thank you to the incredible young participants who came along last weekend, and thank you to everyone who has taken part in the Green Football Cup.