Hansard

I, too, thank my colleague Daniel Johnson for bringing the motion to Parliament for debate.

I love football. Believe it or not, I am still playing two or sometimes three games a week. I am getting a wee bit slower, but I get there. Although I do not know much about Edinburgh South Community FC, other than what I have found out from Daniel Johnson, football clubs in my area have the same problems.

When we talk about football, the most important word is “inclusion”. For decades, Scottish football has been a nucleus of inclusion in our communities, our cities and our schools. It crosses cultural and language barriers and allows people from vastly different backgrounds to play. Men, women, pensioners, including in walking football, and children—they all play footy. They celebrate together and, on occasion, commiserate. There are also some heated debates afterwards about whether something wis or wisnae a penalty.

That aside, football is tremendously important to our culture. Nowadays, we might think that we are known for whisky, haggis and Hogwarts, but I assure you that is disnae matter where you go on this planet, everybody knows Celtic and Rangers. They are known the world over. Unfortunately my local team—Hamilton Accies—has not made it to that echelon. They have not played at Bernabeu stadium or Parc des Princes. Nevertheless, they are loved just the same.

There are tonnes of grass-roots football clubs, such as the ones in my constituency—Eddlewood Football Club, Fairhill amateurs, Larkhall Thistle and Mill United boys’ club. Some amount of footballers come out of my constituency too—Phil O’Donnell, Jim Bett, Bobby Shearer and Ally Maxwell. There are a lot of good footballers, and they all started at grass-roots level in wee local teams. They went from boys’ football up to amateur and then progressed further. There is step-by-step football development. Without local clubs and grass-roots football, Scotland probably widnae be in the World Cup this summer, because there widnae have been a route for the team to follow.

Local football clubs also help to foster healthy lifestyles, which was touched on earlier. The benefits are physical and mental, as people have the opportunity to take off the stress of day to day life and get away from the screens that dominate their days. The opportunity to be present in a team game is therefore more important than ever.

Local football teams also provide an opportunity for another role model in a child’s life. Coaches—or a pal’s dad, because nine times out of 10 that is who the coach is—volunteer and spend their free time managing the team. When my boy played on Saturday mornings—when I might have been hungover—I would be standing getting soaked with all of the other dads and some mums as well, watching them play football, and at the end of the game everyone would shake hands. A lot of friendships from then still carry on to this day.

The phrase it takes a village to raise a child comes to mind. The facilities and opportunities that are offered by clubs such as Edinburgh South are the modern equivalent of that.

I also take this opportunity to talk about Eddlewood Football Club. It is probably slightly behind in some respects, because it is not as big as other teams—although it has a big catchment area—but it recently completed a community asset transfer, so it is going to have a grass park and we are trying to get funding for an astroturf park. It will be a main community hub. It is fortunate that 2,000 brand new houses are being built near it, because that will help the footfall. The community development fund will also contribute to the upgrading of its facilities.

So far, it has raised money for solar panels and heat pumps. When I played with the club, there were cold water tanks for the showers, so we would be staunin under them. We actually only used to wash our boots in it; we didnae ago in the shower. The club is raising money and upgrading facilities, and just getting on with it.

Eddlewood and Edinburgh South are community exemplars. That is why I support the motion for a team from across the country. I had not heard much about Edinburgh South until I read the motion, but I whole-heartedly support and congratulate Edinburgh South. Congratulations for its efforts and being a community exemplar are well deserved.