English football's grassroots are dying a slow, painful and avoidable death

The promise of 2012 Olympic Games, opened five years ago this week, was that they would inspire a generation into sport and transform east London. So then why now, in the shadow of the Olympic Park, is our most popular grassroots sports in decline?

There are some pockets of England that will always be famous for producing footballers; Huyton, Wallsend, and Longsight. But east London, especially the area just beyond Stratford, has always produced more than anywhere else thanks to its old local clubs. Most famously there is Senrab, where John Terry, Ledley King and Jermain Defoe played as boys. And then there is Rippleway.

Last Friday evening, at the PowerLeague centre in Beckton, Rippleway celebrated their 50th birthday. There was a rolling PowerPoint with pictures of their most famous alumni in the red and black striped kit: Alan Dickens, Sol Campbell, Mark Noble and Muzzy Izzett. And from the younger generation, four recent Arsenal graduates: Chuks Aneke, Stephy Mavididi, Chuba Akpom and Alex Iwobi.

Prizes were given out to last year’s teams, from under-9s to under-15s, some presented by a brilliant 14-year-old who has just graduated from to a leading London academy, and has already attracted the attention of England.

Rippleway is a model of everything that a grassroots boys’ club should be: inclusive, local, successful without being consumed by success. “You don’t need to have a ‘win at all costs’ attitude to produce players,” says chairman Frank Felix in his speech to the room.

But life is hard for these teams, harder than ever for these facilitators of cheap accessible organised competitive football. The desperation of parents for their children to make it as a professional risks cutting out these clubs. Fathers show up asking which academy their six-year-old son can get into.

The real pressure, though, is resources. Rippleway, in Felix’s words, are “run on a shoestring”. This season they will field six or seven teams this season. In 1998-99 they had 16. It is a common trend in the era of austerity, with pitches more expensive than ever and public funding cuts deepening their bite.

“Most teams are downsizing and quite a few clubs have folded,” Felix tells The Independent. “Teams we play out in Essex have got resources, but here in the city is where teams are suffering. It’s not just us. It’s tough, a lot of clubs around here are suffering. That’s just the way it’s going.”

We are certainly a long way now from the old heyday of east London football, from the old Newham Football League, from when grounds like Wanstead Flats and Beckton Pyramids were full every weekend. Plenty of serious clubs – Heath Park, Eastlea Colts – have gone to the wall and ultimately others will follow. The promise of 2012 has never looked more empty than when football is struggling to survive on pitches a short walk from the Olympic park.

It used to be that the boroughs would own those football pitches and make them easily bookable, for free, for weekend football. But the pressures on local government funding mean many pitches have been sold off, or passed to private administrators. Even the pitches held in public ownership have become more expensive and worse maintained.

Rippleway and Senrab both play at Wanstead Flats, the famous old pitches owned and run by the City of London Corporation. Their prices have increased over the years to the point where for this season, Rippleway will pay £2,000 for their pitches, and Senrab, who have been based there 53 years, closer to £5,000. Rippleway have now increased their monthly subscriptions for the boys from £15 to £20, something they have always been reluctant to do. A City of London Corporation spokesperson said that pitch fees are “the cheapest in the area”.

But experienced ground-staff have left Wanstead Flats, though numbers have remained stable, and there has been a spate of thefts at the facility over the last year. Clubs have shown up for games on a Sunday morning to find hundreds of pounds worth of kit and nets stolen, and now have to pay for a lockable unit just to keep their possessions safe. Those who run the pitches insist they are not a free storage facility.

Clubs have to pay more and more simply to secure their belongings. Royal Falcons FC train and play at Savage Gardens in Beckton, having stopped playing their matches at Wanstead Flats four years ago. They run 12 teams and will pay just under £3,000 to do so this season, including £800 for safe storage. It means that they need to raise almost £13,000 next season just to exist.

But Royal Falcons, set up 25 years ago by three fathers living on the same street, have found a way to survive thanks to outside help. They have FA charter standard, the quality kite-mark for grassroots football, which helps them to access the funding and facilities that they need. They achieved that with help from the Essex FA but they are the only club in the borough of Newham to have it. Even for them it is a constant struggle.

The overall picture is not pretty and it would be easy enough to blame the boroughs for what has happened to football facilities in the last 10 years. But the reality is that since before the Olympics, local authorities have been starved of money.

Newham Council received £283m from central government in 2010-11 but just £160m in 2017-18. Tower Hamlets have had their own 40 per cent cut over the same timeframe. Both councils have worked hard to defend services but the reality is that they are working with a shrinking budget, and that there are bigger priorities than sport.

Newham Council have maintained their investment in pitch maintenance at just under £50,000 over the past few years and they have spent money on facilities where they can. They invested £500,000 on the West Ham Memorial Rugby Club, whose pitches Rippleway hire out to train on. Like many such facilities in east London, it has been privately run since 2011 – by the East London Community Sports Association – rather than by the borough itself. But sport funding in the budget is unavoidably down: from £3.6m in 2012-13, Olympic year, to £2.5m in 2016-17.

The council is certainly trying. They are launching a new ‘Playing Pitch Strategy’ to help make pitches in the borough available to everyone. “We have a strong grass roots sporting community in the borough which we are looking to support and grow,” said a council spokesperson. “Despite severe cuts to our core government funding we are still investing in sports facilities across the borough.” In Tower Hamlets the council have continued to invest where they can, spending money on a new leisure centre at Poplar Baths and 4G pitch at Stepney Green, and finding sponsorship for their inclusive Mayor's Cup. But it is tough.

Stephen Timms is MP for East Ham and works tirelessly to try to secure funding for the grassroots football teams in his constituency, which covers most of Newham. He told The Independent that the fault lies with central, rather than local government. “I don’t think you can blame the boroughs, they are desperately struggling with a rapidly diminishing funding pot,” he said. “They’re all in the same boat. I would like to see greater recognition from central government of the value of these voluntary initiatives for sport and exercise.”

Ultimately it is austerity that has frayed the fabric of grassroots football, just as it has done to so much else of the fabric of modern Britain. “Austerity is taking a heavy toll on all kinds of things,” Timms said. “These organisations, their survival is completely dependent on the willingness of a small number of adults to put in a great deal of time and money to provide opportunities.”

Timms has worked with Tony Davis and Keith Rochester, who tirelessly run their ‘Dads and Lads’ programme and through that Newham Warriors FC. Their club is dedicated to getting fathers involved and supportive of their sons’ football activities, helping to provide guidance and structure to an area where both are lacking.

Altruism is what keeps people putting on the opportunities for youngsters, nothing else. “If thanks were money, we’d be homeless,” one veteran of the grassroots scene says. “It’s for the love of the game and the community that we do it. It’s about a way of life, ethos and ethics.”

These are the people who were promised so much when the Olympics rolled into their corner of east London five years ago this weekend, pledging to support the “host boroughs” to “deliver change” as part of the “lasting legacy” of the Olympics. And what do they have to show for it?

“Legacy is a myth, a buzzword,” says Nick Crickmar, of Royal Falcons. “Grassroots have not been included at all, there has been no interaction with community groups.” Not one of the football teams spoken to for this article said any different. The optimism of five years ago feels very far away if you just walk a few minutes east of the Olympic Park.