About us:
Nunnery Wood Colts, established in 1990, provide grassroots football opportunities for boys, girls and adults from the age of 18 years to veteran age. Nunnery Wood Colts is made up of over 30 teams, consisting of over 350 players. In addition the club offer low-cost grassroot sessions weekly for up to 200 children who do not currently play for teams. Further to this, the club welcomes 300+ associated adults who attend club matches and use the club as a social hub within the local community.

COVID-19 Impact
Covid has created challenges for everyone over the past 2 years and as a grassroots football club, we are no different. During the lockdowns, limited football was taking place, but some of our regular outgoings continued. On emerging from the lockdowns, football was able to resume, but our running costs were higher than ever! £1,000's was spent on hand sanitiser, sanitiser stations, social distancing signs and additional cleaning products.

Furthermore, additional training facilities were required to ensure teams could socially distance effectively. More equipment had to be purchased to minimise sharing. 

We were also forced to stop serving refreshments on matchdays. This is one of our most regular income streams so as such, has had a huge financial impact. 

Facility loss:
As if COVID hadn't been hard enough, we then discovered we were losing our home facility after 25 years+. As a club, we did our utmost to take over the lease of the facility but we were unsuccessful. This left us with the predicament of how we were going to ensure our 30+ teams could continue playing football.

The good news!
We have successfully formed a partnership with local high school, Blessed Edward's and entered into a long term lease of their facilities. The school is able to provide us with enough grass space for our home pitches, a sand-based AstroTurf for training and a small pavillion.

The not-so-good news...
The not-so-good news is that the new facility requires some work to ensure if is fit for purpose. In order to continue providing football opportunities for the 1000+ children we currently engage weekly, we need to invest considerable funds into the facility to ensure it is fit for purpose. There is no storage on site at present so we need to purchase 2 shipping containers to rectify this. We need new goals for the grass pitches to ensure they are correctly sized and safe for use. The fields need work to ensure they are up to football pitch standard and finally, the pavillion needs work! We need to renovate the changing rooms and toilets to ensure they are fit for purpose and we also need to fit a kitchen and serving hatch to enable us to resume selling refreshments on matchdays. Selling refreshments weekly is the best way the club can ensure we are sustainable and have a reliable income stream.

What the club means to our local community
Our club enables over 500 club players plus 200 opposition players, plus a further 200 unregistered players to  remain active weekly which as we all know, particularly so following the Covid pandemic, is essential for maintaining our mental health. Currently 1 in 6 children in the UK are struggling with their mental health. Furthermore, the NHS reported that during the past 2 years, childhood obesity has increased by 4.5% within primary aged children. It has been proven that sport is the best way for children to combat both of these.

In addition, we are a social hub for parents, carers and other family members and friends to meet on a Saturday and Sunday morning. We bring the community together and enable our 'football family' to meet in a safe and friendly environment. 

It's a team effort:
Our youth players have come up with a variety of fun and imaginative ideas to raise money to support our club. From cake sales to quiz nights and sponsored walks to community litter picks. We are doing all we can to meet our target, but we need your help.

We are asking for anyone and everyone from within our local community and beyond to consider donating as much as you can afford to ensure that Nunnery Wood Colts can continue to provide a safe environment for 1,000's of young people, every week, to remain both physically and socially active. 

How our project will be United by Birmingham 2022:
Our project will enable us to bring more people together in our community. Our home facility is a social hub for 100's of players and adults within our local area. Our project will enable this to continue for many more years. We are improving the physical and mental health of 100's of players on a weekly basis by giving them a safe space to socialise and be active. The club will continue offering free taster sessions across all ages of our junior development centre sessions to allow young people to experience football for what may be the first time and to allow them to connect with other young people within their community.

In addition, the works will allow the club to host an annual tournament/family fun day in June. The club have held an event like this annually for many years but without these works, it would be difficult this year. This event will see us welcome 1,000’s of people from our local community and throughout the rest of the country to our facilities.

Thank you
On behalf of everyone at Nunnery Wood Colts:

Thank you for your support!