Celebrity football raises £7,000 for charity

A cheque for £7,287.10 to help local children with diabetes was presented to representatives from St. Richard’s Hospital, Chichester and St. Mary’s Hospital, Portsmouth this week.

Earlier this year, a superb line up of football players including Arsenal and Brighton ex-professionals and celebrities from sport, TV and showbiz took part in a charity football match at Bognor Regis Football Club.

The money was raised through ticket and match programme sales as well as advertising and will be shared between St. Richard’s Hospital, St. Mary’s Hospital and the Arsenal Charitable Trust.

The charity event was organised by Martlet Homes and Tony Clark, Assistant Football Development Officer, Brighton & Hove Albion FC as part of their ongoing commitment to football in the community.

An emotional Tony Clark and players Paul Reid, Paul Hinshelwood and Adam Hinshelwood from Brighton & Hove Albion FC presented the cheque at Martlet House this week. During the presentation Tony spoke about what diabetes means to him:-

“When my nephew Lewis was first diagnosed with diabetes aged 8, I was very worried about how the condition would affect him. He looked so poorly and spent a week in hospital whilst staff sorted out his medication. Since then, I’ve been fortunate enough to go into hospital with Lewis and see how brilliantly the trained staff and the children manage diabetes and I feel so proud of them all.

“It gives me great pleasure to be able to contribute towards the care of these children.”

“During the match there were three great highlights for me- seeing the 11 excited mascots from the diabetes units walk onto the pitch with the players, watching Tommy Walshe from the BBC gardening programme Groundforce signing autographs for the crowds all through half time and of course scoring the winning goal!”

Emily Loosemore, Fundraising & Marketing Officer for St. Richard’s Charitable Trust said: “The diabetes centre is so grateful for the support of both Martlet Homes and Brighton & Hove Albion. It was such a wonderful achievement to raise this amount of money for the children and we would like to thank everyone involved for the amount of effort they put in to organising the charity match.”