Speaker 2 (00:00.302)
Hello everyone and welcome to the My Local Marketer podcast. I'm your host Maria Lloyd and today I'm speaking with Jeoren Veheggen, who is chair of Caversham AFC. Jeoren, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. How are you?

Well done.

Speaker 1 (00:15.382)
I'm very well, thank you. Welcome to our home here, where we've been for many years. As you can see the nice playing fields that looking lush right now. Although the lines haven't been marked, so that's something we need to sort.

I know it's a beautiful day. mean, obviously we'll discuss your premises shortly. Well, that's why we're outside obviously, because it's more scenic, shall we say, than the inside of your premises. So for our listeners, could you please just give a brief introduction firstly to yourself, and then how you became Chair.

So I've lived in Caversham for about 14 years now. I moved from London with my family and as my eldest, son, started showing an interest in football, we looked around at a football club and I kind of stumbled upon Caversham AFC. And being Dutch originally, as you can tell from the name, you know, I had a particular sort of great grassroots football upbringing, if you will.

And that's something I wanted to replicate for James, my son. And when I got to Clayfield Cops and in general, in Capuchin, I was slightly disappointed in that it felt like a collection of teams rather than a club with a proper home where people would stay after training or matches, a community hub almost. And so I started getting involved in coaching first for my son and his team. And then I

foolishly put my hand up during an AGM to the chairman and asked the question why do we have such rubbish facilities and he called me up after and he said right you're gonna sort this out and so that's how I got involved in the exec committee which is the group of volunteers that help run the club.

Speaker 2 (02:06.638)
That was, we should say that was when you started, that was three years ago, wasn't it? From today, we're in 2025 now when you first became chair, is that right?

No, no, I became chair just over a year and a half ago, but before that, I was two years, I had a special brief trying to look at how we could improve our clubhouse and improve our playing pitches because although it's looking lovely now with the weather we've had over the years with climate change and all these things, we're getting massive issues with water logging and there's a shortage of playing fields around Reading anyway.

So that was kind of my task and I said, I'll do that. But then it's kind of grown into also now taking on the chair rule.

bet you didn't foresee at the time just how hard it would be as we're going to discuss to get the facilities. Caversham AFC, could you give an overview then of the structure of Caversham AFC? So you said it's a club with many teams beneath it. I didn't realise just how big it was until you explained it to me. It's huge.

Yes it is huge. It's actually the biggest club in Reading, in Reading Borough. And we have close to 800 players and that includes men's and women's football and girls and mixed. So we have I think 56 teams currently. We have about 180 coaches and then the club is managed by six executives and maybe another eight to 10 people who do

Speaker 1 (03:37.056)
specific tasks. There's a lot of admin involved in running a club that size. It is hard to manage that in especially in this day and age where you have to think about there's lots more rules and regulations not only from the governing body like the FA but also in terms of the council and in general. So things like discipline, inclusion, safeguarding is massive obviously.

You need to be specialist in all these areas almost and that's quite difficult for a club that's run by volunteers in the end of the day.

How many are actually paid? We need to draw attention to this.

Pretty much nobody is paid in the club. There's a couple of people that do jobs that we kind of have to pay them a little bit for that time, which is more manual kind of labor, kind of intensive kind of stuff. But 95 % is people giving up their free time and sometimes a lot of their free time, which is an amazing thing if you, and that's something I never really realized myself, you know, as parents, we sometimes, and this is not just for football, we kind of perhaps take for granted a little bit.

When we drop off our children at sports or drama or whatever it is, how much effort and time goes into organizing these things. And that's certainly been an education.

Speaker 2 (04:54.094)
Well, like I said, with 180 coaches alone, never mind all the admin, let's not count the hours, but that would be an interesting social post if you did. As you highlighted before, one of the issues that you became sure to solve is the premises because obviously Clayfield Copse has been Caversham's home, but you don't own the premises, do you? And there's no AstroTurf. So like you said, water logging and things like that are a problem. So what's the situation with that?

So the situation is that we have a pavilion which I showed you around earlier which is owned by the council which in the past we've leased but that lease has expired for last 7 or 8 years. But the bottom line is the council don't have the resources and the funding themselves to keep all these pavilions around Reading in all the parks that we have up to a level that now is required to play sports in a safe, inclusive way.

For example, we have no way of offering disability football, for example, even though it's something we think we should and would want to, but the facilities are just not up to scratch. It's actually, I wouldn't say unsafe, but there are certainly aspects around hygiene and mold and damp and things like that, make it completely unacceptable, really, I would say, in the kind of rich society that we live. So that's one area that we really need to change. Girls football has grown a lot over the last 10 years.

but I wouldn't want to my own daughter here. So, you know, something has to change in that respect. And then there is, in a way more importantly, is the number of hours we can train and play matches on these fields. And as you can see, and the hint is in the name, Clayfield Cops, so it's clay based, which doesn't help for pitches in a way. And they're on a slope, the viewers might be able to see, it goes up a bit from here. So we have four pitches.

Even though we do a lot in terms of trying to improve the grass and improve the drainage, can't do fundamental things to it because it's not our land and it's communal space, which is all fine. But the council again don't have the time, the inclination, the resources to do something about that. And so we're losing about sort of eight weeks a year in terms of being able to play football, which is quite a lot. So the problem is that we don't own our

Speaker 1 (07:23.16)
facilities. Now nationwide most clubs our size would have either very long-term leases either through council or private or they would own their own facilities. We're a bit unfortunate that we are this size and we rely on council land to provide football. So we are trying to get control. So what we want is to lease the fields. So obviously it's surrounded by beautiful woodlands here and it's great for dog walkers and people to enjoy.

the open spaces and the woodland spaces, but we want to lease the fields so we can do more to the pitches, for example, install drainage and irrigation systems, for example, or potentially an artificial pitch that would increase the capacity of playing time. And at the same time, we also would want to either own or lease the pavilion so that we could find investment to improve those. And actually investment both in improvement of grass pitches

or creation of artificial pitches and the improvement of pavilions. There's a lot of funding available, which is the irony almost, is that the money is there. It's just finding a way through what's almost like a jungle of bureaucracy and unwillingness to help get this done.

think that's the tricky thing because you have the funding. think how much do you have? Is it a million or something? It's a huge number.

We did at one point have together with different pots of money a plan together to make an investment in a clubhouse and a 3G pitch that would be sort of just here behind. that will the total investment was just north of a million pounds. we together with the clubs funds, have some saved some money over the years. Previous chairman and the committee has done a great job in that sense. So we had the funding. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (09:13.038)
The with funding is normally the funding has an expiration date. It's not in perpetuity you get this, can it whenever you like it, you must use it by a certain date, which obviously given the issues, we won't go into details, but given the issues with getting approval, shall we say, getting it through the legal channels, it's, yeah, you face great difficulty there, haven't you?

Yes, think the long and short of it really is that, well first of all the council have a plan that has a provision for an artificial pitch north of the river, so in Caversham. And that's part of a wider Reading borough plan as the council has recognised that there needs to be investment made. Just as an interesting comparison, there are more artificial tennis courts in Caversham than there are artificial football fields. Now I don't have anything against tennis, it's a great sport, but it seems disproportionate.

if you look at the relative sizes of the sports. So we can do it for tennis somehow, but we can't do it for football. And so I think there's something that's gone wrong there. And we've moved ourselves, I think, not just this is to do with Reading borough Council, I think this is councils across the country and this is a national problem almost, where if you want to change something, you're automatically met with resistance and where perhaps we've not balanced out the need

you know, in this case the need of children being able to play sports and the health benefits and the social benefits that come with that versus, for example, environmental concerns or planning concerns. And so what we found out through this process as a council is quite hesitant and quite resistant in taking on projects that might meet with opposition from one side or another.

But just to point out as we said before, Caversham is run by a group of volunteers, so although you are leading this, in theory you shouldn't be spending what I know is a lot of time to collect the funding and then put together the application. It should really be someone helping you, let's say.

Speaker 1 (11:16.364)
Yes, in an ideal world. But we quickly found out that... And we've said from the start, it's like we'll do the heavy lifting, we'll do the thinking, the putting everything together, because we think this is really important. You're right, there isn't really any... And I don't want to of squarely put the blame on councillors and people within the council. They have lot of priorities and a lot of things they need to consider, but just...

with my hat on and selfishly, greater help is needed. And I think it's, if we are having this problem, then other people with other priorities must be having the same problem. And that's not a good thing.

No it's not. On a positive note, clearly how long has Caversham AFC been going for now? How many years again?

We were founded in 1970.

Quick maths, 55 years. I mean, clearly in that time you must have had many successes. Clearly the size of the club shows just how many successes you've got. So could you go into details on to a couple of those that you've had?

Speaker 1 (12:08.536)
here.

Speaker 1 (12:21.442)
We're not a club where we are about winning. So for us, it's really to provide sort of fun, inclusive, safe football for children of all abilities and of all backgrounds. That's what we're here to provide. So we don't really talk about winning. Of course, we love it when our under 12s are in a final of a cup or my son's team is winning the league this year. It's great. And there's always a competitive element to sport, but that's not really what

what we are about as a club and we want to also be very distinct in that. Which is also a challenge because it's very easy to lead a club where it's just about performance and you cast away people that don't fit that mould and then you have a very homogeneous group with all the notes in the same direction. Like us, we have children that maybe are age 14, 15 that decide they want to take up football. And why not? And they should have the ability to do so.

But that means you have to have a different team environment, have to multiple teams to be able to do that.

Like you said before, the community, being part of the community is a very big thing for Caversham AFC. So how have you been able to do that so far or how do you plan to do that going forwards?

So I don't think we've done enough in that respect. We're really starting. So one of the things I put to the team as a vision was that we should include the community more. So when we were talking about investments in facilities, we included local schools and other community groups, scout groups, other groups shared the plans, the Friends of Clayfield Cops included.

Speaker 1 (14:01.656)
to try and bring everyone together around this plan and see if our clubhouse, which might have a catering facility, might have storage facility for people who want to run a yoga club or people who want to put their tools here for helping around the woodlands, keeping those beautiful. But I think we need to and can do more. And we're starting actually with, we have an annual fun day, which is the end of the season. Part of that is to celebrate.

all the success and the fun that children have had throughout the season, children get trophies, etc. And it's a big event, it's held here, outdoor, where we have food, drinks, loads of inflatables, games, etc. And this year we'll have five schools, local schools, participate and some other local community groups who can have a stall and they can run their own almost mini-program, so they can do something to raise money or they can do something to raise awareness for an issue that they have.

That's one way of trying to bring the community closer together. Also make people aware of who we are and what we do and what we need.

That's a great idea. I communicating, as you said, and being part of the community is so important. How do you communicate externally or internally when you need to get a message around all those different teams?

So I think I'm probably a member of about, I don't know, 20 WhatsApp groups.

Speaker 2 (15:31.278)
Don't envy that.

No. So we have a hierarchy of messaging. So we have a club-wide group which we encourage parents, coaches, anyone to become a member and we use that as a broadcast-only channel. Besides that, we'll use Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. But we found that WhatsApp is... Nobody reads email anymore, so nobody has the time. So WhatsApp is an effective tool if you use it in a measured way.

So important club announcements like important dates or around presentation day and getting people excited about that or if we need a club clear out we can ask people for some help or for example around trying to get this lease sorted with the council some legal help so I a couple of weeks ago put out a message and straight away I had four solicitors that I didn't know existed within the club come forward and say yes I'll give some of my time so that's a great way and then we have

different groups. we have each age group. So we're divided in age groups, starting with under fives, under six, all the way up to under 18s and then men's and women's. And each age group will have an age lead. And the age leads role is really to try and be the first port of contact for the coaches that sit within that age group for anything, any advice, any concerns, any issues.

So that's the next sort of layer of communication where we go out to age leads who then can inform their coaches of important things. And then we have various committees around, for example, every almost every Saturday morning or Friday evening, somebody needs to do pitch inspections. So there's pitch inspections and we don't, by the way, only use Clayfield Cops. use Rivermead, we use Christchurch Meadows, we use Highdown for winter training. So we use quite a lot of other facilities because we're so big.

Speaker 1 (17:26.187)
can't rely on just four pitches. So again that needs a lot of organizing as well in terms of who plays where etc. So there's all kinds of little WhatsApp groups.

You say people don't read email anymore, but you do have a newsletter, don't you?

We do, yes. And we actually started off printing them because we thought it would be good to hand out to parents, you know, easier to get them. And that's been quite a good success. And that goes out now as a biannual letter just to update everyone about things like progress with facilities or achievements from teams. We can celebrate those. There could be calls to action in there, those kind of things.

Can people help and get involved?

So we always need volunteers and it's almost what we ask for is maybe if you have two, three hours that you could spare during the week, then we can find a job to do. And that's worked well. So yeah, it's reaching out to one of the execs in the club and saying, hey, I might have two or three hours a week or a month that I can dedicate to the club. And then we can find you maybe it's new player registration or

Speaker 1 (18:40.364)
DBS checks that need happen. Maybe you like to be out in nature, maybe it's helping with pitch inspections or it's helping to improve. As we will get the lease, we will do more of our own pitch maintenance. So it's things like that. There's tons and tons of things that need to happen where we rely on volunteers. And I would encourage especially any members listening or ex-members listening and you have a bit more time and you want to get involved and you want to get behind a club.

that has a direction of travel that we want to be more central to the local community, I, the club, need help with that.

As you said, the core volunteers, yes fine, they have a lot to do, but it doesn't take a lot of time. A couple of hours a month, any time that people have, and I'll put the contact details on the episode landing page. If anyone's got any free time and they want to help, get involved please.

Yeah, you can write chair at camishamafc.co.uk

Is there anything that you would like to leave our listeners with?

Speaker 1 (19:38.574)
I think I'll go back to what I said before in that the lesson I've learned from this journey up till now. I think a lot of the time we don't realize that the most help is close to our doorstep. We can all have global big dreams and think about big problems that the world face, but I think if we try and do something locally to help our local community, and that doesn't have to be for Caversham AFC, although much appreciated if so,

We live in a wonderful area. We're very blessed with lots of great things, lots of great people, but I think it can be even better if everyone just paid attention to sort of local causes and local needs, including local businesses that I think needs more support.

And I think it's like with marketing, if you focus on a small area, you'll actually see the impact on the people around you, which is much more impactful.

and very rewarding I think if you get involved. I've felt it difficult at times and hard work and plenty of hours but it's definitely rewarding and much more rewarding than donating money to a charity that helps a good cause but is quite far away from where we live.

And you've no idea where it goes to. Obviously it goes into these big systems. You've no idea where your £10 has gone or who has helped.

Speaker 1 (21:01.35)
No, exactly, exactly. And I think that's the key thing. So yeah, I would say, look around you where you live. There might be local businesses, local organizations, local sports clubs that need a hand. Go and help them and see what that's like and what you get in return.

a lovely message to leave our listeners on with. So thank you so much for your time. Thank you for all that you do for Caversham AFC and yeah, good luck with getting the premises sorted out for the club.

Thank you very much for having me on your podcast and all the best as well with all your activities.