A football team for young people set up in one of the most impoverished areas in Canonbury has big dreams of the Premier League.
The Essex Road Giants, which had no funding until this year and trains on a concrete pitch, is now on the top of the Camden & Islington Youth Football League with an Under 14 team.
The group was created a year ago by two young men from Marquess Estate, Ryan Hassan and Lewis Yeboah, and accommodate 22 boys age between 13 and 14.
The start wasn’t easy. To get into the Camden & Islington Youth Football League, they needed to register the team and get a kit. “They asked how good we were. We said we were great. Then in the first game we were beaten by 7 x 1,” recalls Hassan, who is a PE at a primary school in Tower Hamlets.
“Some of the boys started crying. It was hard for some of them to deal with it. Still, everyone apart from one stick to the team,” the coach says.
With the training, the Giants started to improve. In January 2014, the team went four games unbeaten and finished seventh at the end the season in April.
This season the team hasn’t lost any games. “Last year, we had a week to prepare. This year, we had two months.
“If we win this season, we go to Division A, our equivalent of the Premier League,” says Hassan.
More than a football team, the Giants became an option for young people in an area where the figures of anti-social behaviour are the highest in the ward. The Marquess Estate is ranked in the Police top priorities in Canonbury for patrols.
“We keep the boys occupied. Every one can come to the training sessions. Parents come to us and ask if we can coach their children,” says Hassan.
The voluntary work done at the Giants got the attention of the community organization Help on Your Door Step, who found the team in a focus group in August.
The organization contacted the council, which is now paying for 25 weeks of football for the team. In January, they are moving from the concrete pitch at Dover Court to the William Tyndale Football pitch.
Hassan says the project is also an opportunity to discover talented football players and is confident on the performance of the young team.
“Some of them are very good. We are definitely going to see some of them playing professionally.
“If they don’t make it to the Premier League, they definitely have the talent to have a career in football.”
Pictures courtesy of Zoe Webber
