Hitchin Town Football Club

Football for the future: The Local Alternative

Sunday, August 8 2010

As part of the "Football for the Future" campaign, this text is being used in a promotional flyer for the club:

Overhyped, overpriced, overpaid, over-rated...these are just some of the terms used to describe football this past summer.

As we saw in the World Cup, football at the highest level has become an over-commoditised product that people are finding difficult to identify with. And it’s not just at international level...

How can young people identify with teams and players that are no more real to them than a fictional character on TV? Youngsters walk around town with football shirts representing teams they have probably never seen play...from towns they have never, or will never, visit in their lives!

Football teams represent towns and cities. They become part of the public image of that town. Filling teams with players drawn from all over the world is not good for the long-term development of the game – as we shall surely witness in Britain in the coming years. In short, football is no longer the game of the people – it is the game of globalised commerce and industry.

But there exists in Britain another side to football – real, genuine football that represents local people. And it can be found in Hitchin, where it has been played since the mid-1800s.

Hitchin Town Football Club has been making significant strides in recent years to embrace the local community. You may not know it, but we have been involved in countless youth-driven projects that the public rarely read about. We have a strong commitment to disabled football, a desire to build and develop youth football and offer coaching to youngsters throughout every school holiday period. What’s more, for the past 20 years, we have been run prudently, sensibly and always with one eye on ensuring the financial security of football in Hitchin.

It has not always been easy, indeed we have not had the best of luck in recent years, but unlike so many clubs who have folded, gone into administration or been plunged into crisis, our primary goal is to ensure that football remains at a good level in Hitchin – as it has done for decades.

We feel certain that if you take a short walk from the town centre, cross Butts Close and head towards the floodlight pylons, you will discover a friendly, well-run and enthusiastic club. We don’t aspire to be Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool or Manchester United....but we do aim to carry the footballing flag for the town of Hitchin. Come and see us!