Saturday 4th June saw Crawley’s Celtic and Irish Cultural Society (CICS) co-hosting the first ever Crawley Community Football Tournament in association with Sussex Police,  BAM FM Ltd,  Crawley United Football Club and Premier Sports and Leisure

As part of Crawley Fleadh 2011, the cross-community tournament saw teams representing 12 of Crawley’s communities taking part at Ifield Community College. Communities from as far away as Sri-Lanka, India and Africa matched their skills with the likes of Hungary, Poland teams from the rest of Europe as well as England and Ireland.

After a thrilling day of competition Crawley’s Portuguese Association came out tournament winners by beating Black History in a 1-0 decider

The object of the tournament was to help integrate Crawley’s communities more into its multicultural make-up.  We want to make Crawley a town that has a place for people of all kinds and abilities, all nationalities and all faiths and where ‘difference’ is embraced.  With football on the agenda the event appealed to all and we feel our outcomes have been met, which will help build a better and stronger community.

All acknowledged it to be a great success not only on the playing fields but how all the groups integrated and how new friendships were forged.  Children, as well as adults learnt new games, more about the flags of the many teams taking place as well as the various selections of food on offer.

PC Sarah Jones of Sussex Police said she “came away from the day feeling quite humbled by the selflessness of people’s actions and the very obvious presence of a desire to make Crawley one very special community.  I learnt that you can achieve pretty much anything with some good friends and a bit of determination.  This will be the first of many such events.  A massive thank you to everyone who participated ”

The Mayor of Crawley, Cllr Carol Eade on her second weekend in office in presenting the trophies praised the hard and rewarding work of the organisers and went on to say “she was very proud of how all were encouraged to celebrate their differences and yet unite to become ‘one’ in the town of Crawley.”

We would like to thank all competitors for taking part and making the day a real success.

A special thank you goes out to Sussex Police’s Crawley Engagement team of PC Sarah Jones PCSOs Michele Jack and Tony Cook who’s efforts at co-ordinating the various groups paid great dividends in the diversity of the team taking part.

Both Charlotte and Steve Hoffman of Crawley United Football Club put the groups and fixtures structure together that saw the games run like clockwork. We must say at this stage that Steve who plays in Goal has a fantastic knowledge of how the game is played out field but his voice-box must be a little bit sore this morning!

We thank Lynn Duggan and her team from BAM FM Ltd www.bam.co.uk for allowing us to use the fantastic facilities at Ifield Community College and being there with their support staff all day

We would like to thank John Thornley-Gibson of the FA who gave up his time to keep all in order on refereeing some of the group matches and the final.

Special thanks goes to Premier Sports and Leisure www.premiersportsonline.co.uk who sponsored the winners and runners up trophies and provided a great memento for everybody taking part.

Not forgetting Hugo Rocha – who was on the winning Portuguese team – for the artwork and design on the logos.

This is the first of many inter community events and we would like to say how pleased we are with it’s success and look forward to working with more of the communities that make up this special town of Crawley.

Our activities in the Celtic and Irish Cultural Society are key to addressing social inclusion to integrate the Irish and all communities more fully in to a multicultural society and provide opportunities for social interaction and creative expression and help develop social skills, build confidence and lead more active and healthy lives.  We feel we have furthered that goal with the Crawley Community Football Tournament.

If anybody out there has any further ideas on ways to further community integration we would love to hear them – please use the “contact us” option at www.celtic-irish.co.uk using Community Cohesion in Crawley as the Subject, we will get back to you.