Back in 2014 when the first strategy meetings took place regarding the project that was then called “Community Football Club for Liverpool” and later became City of Liverpool FC, we discussed what the club’s role could be in local grassroots football.

We were unanimous back then that in the grassroots sense, we did not want to compete with local junior football clubs, attracting kids away from existing teams to come and play for our junior teams and nor did we just want to land on a junior football club, impose our name upon them and tick a box that implied we had somehow done our bit for community football.

The committee at that time all agreed that we wanted to support local grassroots football, by helping as many junior football clubs as possible.

In June 2016, we received notification from the FA that we would be playing in the Hallmark Security League in Season 2016-17, after we were forced to appeal the original decision to place us at Step 7 of the National League pyramid. From that moment on, every bit of time we could spend as volunteers, has been spent getting a semi professional football club up and playing and competing in what is a very high standard of football.

Consequently, we have not been able to spend as much time as we would have liked developing our community strategy, which genuinely was a key factor in us starting the club in the 1st place. We as a club along with our Partisan supporters have done some great things for the community; Supporting Foodbanks, the Jospice collection, the Zak Harris collection to name just some, but it was always in the forefront of our minds that we had to make good on our grassroots football pledge.

So today we are delighted to announce that with immediate effect, we have become the sponsor of the Edge Hill JFL, which will now be known as the City of Liverpool FC Edge Hill JFL. Our sponsorship of £569 will be used by the City of Liverpool FC Edge Hill JFL to upgrade the kitchen at the league’s home ground of Botanic Park, which in addition to providing hot and cold food and drinks for volunteers, players and parents, will also help to make the league become self-funding and sustainable moving forward.

COLFC Chairman Paul Manning said “When we were first approached by our own supporter and Edge Hill JFL league secretary John Worthington to see if we could help the league out, we immediately agreed and knew that it was something which we could deliver on.

John explained that the league had 70 odd teams in 40 clubs in a range of age groups and having been a parent, coach and volunteer at my own Junior football club, I know how important a kitchen or café is to the sustainability of junior football clubs or in this case; an entire League. That’s at least 700 local children that we are delighted to be able to help and continue to help in the years to come”

John Worthington, secretary of COLFC Edge Hill JFL said “This sponsorship by City of Liverpool FC will be a big help to our league and knowing how much COLFC value the kids coming along to watch the team, we are confident that this is going to be a great partnership moving forward.

With the sponsorship we can now begin to upgrade our kitchen to help make the league sustainable and we know that there is going to be a strong connection between our league, our clubs, our parents and most importantly our children, with City of Liverpool Football Club.”