A group of young footballers from Bath and the surrounding area are on their way to becoming the sporting role models of the future following a trip to promote the game in Ghana.
Seventeen 12 and 13-year-old Bath and Wiltshire Boys (BWB) players visited the town of Kokroeite on the Atlantic coast near Accra, capital of the West African country, at the end of February.
Tim Kirk organised the trip for BWB, which is part of the FA-backed Bath and Wiltshire Schools Sports Trust of which he is a trustee.
The coach said: “The idea was it would be an enrichment project. We wanted to use the medium of football, because they love it out there, to try and explore the four main values of the association – responsibility, resilience, compassion and curiosity.
“They are football players who are also good people able to take good decisions and think about others – promoting that was the main reason for the trip.”
The group of boys visited one of the country’s notorious slave castles, Cape Coast Castle, from all of which some four million slaves were trafficked abroad during the time of the slave trade. Many of them came through Bristol and Liverpool.
The youngsters had to raise £6,000 to go towards making the new sports ground, where an 11-aside tournament was held in which they won one and lost two of their three matches against local teams.
During the trip the boys also appeared on national TV with some government minister.
Altus are the official sponsors of the BWB training kits.
Read full Bath Chronicle article here
