East Lancs Rangers was the result of a request from several people in East Lancashire. Caroline Grimshaw and Lee Scott spoke on behalf of a local day opportunities group run by and behalf of adults with learning disabilities. Our ?rst move was to run a weekly football session. After attending this community football skills session run by Jackie Nelson and Sharon Lees some of the team relished the opportunity to put their skills to the test and play competitive football. We spoke with Alan Greenwood the Secretary of the ADJFL and Mike Nadal at Lancashire FA to see how this could become possible. We also arranged a fun day at Hyndburn Sports centre in June 2011 to attract new players. We also played our ?rst ever friendly game the same month. We were lucky that ADJFL offered to sponsor a kit for team and we would play as a representative team of ADJFL playing in claret and blue. Our next step was to join the Lancashire Ability Counts League in November 2011. The ?rst tournament was at the Soccer Dome and Soccer Burnly and proved to be a huge success.
East Lancs Rangers Disability Team
The enthusiasm shown by the players was unbelievable and from then on the team went from strength to strength. New players were eager to join and the tournaments were a pleasure to be part of. We completed our ?rst season as Champions of the Championship of the LFA Disability Count league and won the Ormerod Trophy at a tournament in Lytham– not a bad ?rst season! At the end of the ?rst season Burnley FC and ADJFL East Lancs Rangers agreed to become partners in developing the team
further with Burnley FC providing a coach to enhance the quality of the players. We have just completed a grading day to ascertain which division of the League we’ll play in next season. We are looking forward to new challenges and maybe having two teams in the near future. The team looked for a sponsor Duncan Seddon and Matt Pickup from Eco Solartech took up the sponsorship and we are grateful to them for their kind sponsorship A big ‘Thank You’ to everyone who has made this possible
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