Having won the Outstanding Contribution to Community Football award in Middlesex, Bedfont Sports Club’s David Reader is now in the running to win the national accolade.
Reader is up for the People’s Award – voted for by the public – in the 2014 FA Community Awards, and he needs your vote to win.
After being recognised for transforming the fortunes of Bedfont Sports with 30 years of hard work, Reader will join eight other regional winners from across England who have been shortlisted.
Voting opened on Monday at www.thefa.com/yourgame, with the winner announced at the 2014 Community Awards ceremony at Wembley on August 10.
Reader has been involved in youth football for almost 30 years, starting out managing the 6th Hounslow Cub Scout Football Team, then went on to transform Bedfont Sunday in 1988 and founded Bedfont Sports Club soon after.
He started the club with one team and no football pitches, changing rooms or funds, but has since worked tirelessly to lobby for grants, raising more than £1.3 million to help develop the club.
When junior football club Bedfont Eagles were made homeless in 2000, Reader took them in at Bedfont Sports, pulling three pitches together so they could play on one site. The youth section has since grown from four teams to the 19 they have today.
The men's section is also thriving. While Bedfont Sunday are an established fixture on the local Sunday league scene, Bedfont Sports have worked their way through local and county leagues to become a senior non-league side in the Combined Counties Premier.
