Whats it all about..

Faith based football league is a project designed to engage with the hard to reach communities who cannot access mainstream provision. The project will develop the capacity of individuals to set up their football clubs, give advice on policy and procedures for governance of clubs and facilitate grassroots leagues in the community, implementing procedures and processes in start up, small football clubs in the community.

The aim is to run a league to encourage players from all faiths to play together and more importantly raise awareness and increase understanding of the diverse communities of Luton. The league will be played once a week on a Monday night - Juniors - 5pm to 7pm, Adults - 8pm to 9.30pm and every eighth week a tournament will be held. The aim is to have an adult and youth section to the league.

During the tournament we will also have an opportunity for teams to integrate and during the break invite speakers down to open the debate on community cohesion and what this means to the many communities of Luton.

Our aim is also to open the league up to the emerging communities who have just settled in the town, Polish, Romanian and Somalian. Another objective is to encourage these communities to develop their own clubs and affiliate to the County FA and the BME football forum.

On this website teams can view scores, reports and updates and more importantly also an area for those participating to express their views on how this league has impacted them as an individual and as a member of their community. This website will also update participants on up and coming events such as one day tournaments and speakers invited.

Developments for the league will include a representative team picked from the FBFL to play an annual game against the emergency services at Luton Town Football club with invitations going out to the whole community to come along and support.

To also sustain the project beyond the funding we aim to work in partnership with local businesses to sponsor the league and various teams and also work closely with the county FA to gain a charter mark for the league. The venue will be the new floodlit astro turf complex at Denbigh Sports college, another of our partners.

The FBFL will also attract younger participants through their work with out of hours school learning. Our aim is to produce a sports programme with a predominance of football for the children who attend Arabic classes after school and then encourage the young people to attend a junior tournament on a twilight session at the Denbigh Sports complex.

There will be prizes for the winners and runners up including a player of the tournament trophy and fair play trophy. This whole league is in association with Bedfordshire and Luton Fire and Rescue service who have kindly funded the whole project; their aims are straightforward for all participants - to understand the importance of safe fire messages. Please click on the link to access a message from the area commander.