Who are we?
Support After Sport is a comprehensive support network designed to emotionally support academy footballers and their families who are deselected, as well as injured and retired athletes, in transitioning to new careers and life paths. Also to grow into a support system for all athletes from any sport.
Rich Wilkinson, Ben Marlow and Shaun Fallon founded the company after working together on various related projects. They serve as the founders of Support After Sport.
Rich has spent the last 5 years directly supporting in the field, utilising his experience and Bsc Honours degree in Person Centred Counselling to assist deselected players successfully transition into their post sports career life. He has also gained commercially experience and resilience from running his own successful photography business for 18 years. Rich’s peer review paper regarding the scale of the issues surrounding deselected players is regularly used as an authoritative research source by journalists and documentary film makers when creating informative content around this subject matter. To this end Rich has recently taken part in a documentary called Sidelined, that explains the plight of the deselected footballer and also a SKY Sports documentary regarding football academies and mental health. Rich himself is a deselected footballer.
Our team consists of a Theraputic Lead, Mentoring and Transition Lead, Wellbeing and Education Lead, Social and Visual lead.

Why are we crowdfunding?
1.65 million boys play football, less than 1% make it into an academy and only 9% go on to make a single Professional Appearance.
At present no emotional support is provided for the Deselected players and their families after they leave the football academy.
Football players create an identity for themselves when they are part of the football club; once their career is terminated through deselection or injury, players can find it very difficult to understand who they are outside the game. They can experience anxieties surrounding their personality and experience feelings of loss and shame.
Without an emotional support system in place for the players, they can experience psychological distress leading to anxiety, depression and in some cases suicidal thoughts and suicide.
We are looking to raise funding to provide workshops to raise awareness to the players and parents preparing them for the challenges that Deselection brings. We are also looking to offer three mentorship calls after Deselection for players and families and counselling if needed.
Fundraising would also help us to design a more efficient website where we can bring the Deselected Academy football players and families together via a login section.
We are also looking to create downloadable information sheets offering survival information to those just receiving the news about Deselection.
So far all of our grant funding applications have been unsuccessful leaving us feeling frustrated that we can't move forward in getting the support out there to players and families that are suffering. I personally have been counselling deselected players on a voluntary bases along side my counselling practice caseload but would really like to be able to bring a community of counsellors together to support these players and their families.
Please watch these TWO video's below, as it shows how vital the support is that we are offering.


How we’ll spend the money raised
Donations will be directly helping the mental health of the players and their families. It will be enabling us to get the mentorship support and counselling to the players.
Counselling Session Support Breakdown
30 minute Counselling Session = £25 / Full 1 hour counselling session = £50 /Block of 5 counselling sessions = £250 / Block of 10 counselling sessions = £500.
The mentorship calls cost £25 per call.
Donations will also help us to purchase a more functional website that has the facilities to offer downloadable information to member, receive donations and bring people together. Also the option to collaborate with other like minded businesses, who offer further career transitioning advice.
Community impact
The Deselected football community has no real platform to all come together and share their experiences which can help others in the same situation. While we look to help the community with direct support through mentorship and counselling we also want to raise more awareness around Deselection, injury and retirement from all sports.

How you can play your part
There are four simple ways to help us reach our target, and make this project a reality.
1. Make a pledge. Don’t delay if you’re going to support us because momentum is key to our success!
2. Spread the word. Share our project on your social media pages and tell the world to get behind us! The more people we reach, the more support we will get.
3. Offer rewards. Get involved if you are a local business by donating things we can offer to our supporters. We will give you a shout out!
4. Fundraise for us. If you want to run your own fundraiser – maybe a sponsored activity or similar – use the 'contact project' button at the top of our page to let us know. Setting up your own page only takes a few minutes and you won’t need any bank details. Just a fun idea!
Chasing The Dream Episode 3 featuring Rich Wilkinson and Shaun Fallon.
