The Football In The Community scheme arrived at a pivotal time in the history of the national game. Battered by numerous tragedies, and with the Thatcher government of the 1980s seemingly prepared for the sport to wither on the vine, the PFA sought to buck the trend by getting professional players to spend a few hours a week on community work. The initial pilot area was the football hotbed of the North-West comprising Manchester and Lancashire and such was the success of the scheme that within a few years it had extended to every professional club in the Football League. The aim of the scheme was to take football into areas where traditional social work wasnt working, using football as a way of improving the quality of life of children, the disabled, teenagers, ex-offenders and the unemployed, in a way that had never been tried before. FITC also tackled social issues such as racism, homophobia and gender through the medium of the beautiful game. Now, 35 years later, The Football In The Community scheme is a well-established at the heart of the national game and over the course of its history has played no small part in taking football from a sport regarded by the media as permanently associated with hooliganism and violence to its current status as a national obsession which openly welcomes families and people of all races into stadia and brings in billions to the economy every year.
Roger Reade began his career in football administration at Manchester City Football Club in 1975 when he was appointed as an administrative assistant working in the clubs main office. In 1979 he was appointed as the youngest Secretary in the Football League when he became Club Secretary at Doncaster Rovers. He returned to work at Manchester City as an Assistant to Citys long-serving Club Secretary Bernard Halford in 1983. In 1986, Roger was appointed as General/Chief Administrator to the new pilot Community Programme in Professional Football where he eventually worked alongside over 100 community schemes linked with professional football over the next 21 years. He was also awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Buckinghamshire Chilterns University for services to football in 2003. Since 2007 he has held positions at Manchester CFA (Chief Executive), Blackpool FC Community Trust (Director of Strategic Development) and at Sheffield & Hallamshire CFA (Company/General Secretary), the latter of which he left after serving for just under six years in 2018. He is a lifelong Manchester City supporter and has a season ticket for the Etihad.
Roger Reade has created an impressive and chronological analysis of the development and progression of the national Community Programme over the past thirty years, and we should be enormously proud of the positive influence and contributions made by so many to effect positive change in our society. The book is a tribute to the thousands of people involved in footballs social responsibility programme -- Gordon Taylor, OBE
