Story added: 8th September 2016

Looking back on another action-packed summer at CSF

The start of September marks the end of another busy summer at the Community Sports Foundation – full of events, surprises and plenty of football…

Here’s our short review on just some of the key events and programmes that helped to make it such a memorable one:

A record Summer Cup…

The summer kicked off with the seventeenth annual Summer Cup, held at Easton & Otley College.

The two-day tournament featured a record 250 local youth teams and 5000 spectators.

Soccer Schools

Over 900 young participants joined us at nineteen Soccer School venues across Norfolk.

A number of locations received surprise visits from City’s Steven Whittaker, Graham Dorrans, Wes Hoolahan (pictured above, right) and Alex Neil, who joined the youngsters for Q&A sessions, photographs and small-sided games.

Street Life Soccer (SLS)

Nine members of CSF’s SLS squad travelled to London in August to represent Norwich City FC at the Street Football Festival.

A total of six teams from across the UK competed in the tournament, including Arsenal, Tottenham Hotspur and Southampton.

Also, James Earley (pictured below, left), a long-time SLS participant, was selected to represent England in the Homeless FA Street Life Football tournament. Held at the state-of-the-art St George’s Park, James stayed in luxury accommodation and, in his words, “experienced things I never thought I would before”.

Carrow Road surprise!

A group of the Foundation’s disability participants were invited to join the Norwich City FC first-team on the Carrow Road pitch at the end of their open training session.

The highlight of the day was a small-sided fixture between the participants and the players, rounded off with a penalty-shoot out against City shot-stopper Michael McGovern!

Run Norwich

Thousands of runners returned to the streets of Norwich for the second Run Norwich event.

Special guest Delia Smith sounded the start horn while Norwich City FC’s Ryan Bennett and John Ruddy were on hand to distribute medals to some of the finishers.

National Citizen Service

Over 750 young people took part in our NCS summer programme.

The participants helped to make a difference in their local community with over 60 hours of social action work each, as well as enjoying back-to-back residential weeks across June, July and August.

CSF trustee Jake Humphrey was the guest of honour at one of the graduation events, held at Carrow Road following the completion of the programme; he presented the teenagers with certificates and praised the groups for their hard work.