By Mark Smith
Following the popularity of a piece on Yorkshire Voice about community football, we decided to go and experience this for ourselves at a local five-a-side league in Castleford.
Run by Champion Soccer in partnership with Power Play, there are 25 leagues a week in West Yorkshire along with many teams signing up to play most week nights.
Scott Smith, events and league manager at Champion Soccer, spoke about the importance of the league to many people from local and surrounding areas.
He said: “You can see from the amount of people in the league, that 5-a-side is getting more and more popular. There is a constant demand for football and new teams join every year.”
A couple of players from Altofts Albion, a team in the league, agreed with that statement and went on to describe how easy and convenient the league is for them.
Adam Hoyle said: “It saves a lot of time, you can come down after work and have a game of football.”
Despite the league being fun for Altofts, they were quick to reassure that they were still competitive. Joe Chawner said:“The league is still tough for us.” And Adam added: “We want to win every game that we are in”.
Powerplay has been running for over 15 years and continues to promote football at over 200 locations across the UK. With demand continuing to increase for the leagues, football and 5-a-side in particular is more popular than ever.