⚽️🎉| CLYDE APOLLO TURNS 1️⃣
Today marks a year to the day since the club was formed and wow, what a year it has been. Things have been moving so quickly at the club, and today is a fitting occasion to reflect on what has been the first 365 days of Clyde Apollo Football Club.
Firstly, work began off the park to lay down the groundwork and the foundations as to what would be the core values and principles of the club going forward. A management committee was formed to govern this, and its first step was to engage with our communities. The most humbling of all was to supply kits to West of Scotland Disability Sports as they went to compete in the Summer Games. Community engagement has been a focal point throughout the year, more recently with our Christmas Appeals where we were able to support both Men Matter Scotland & the Glasgow Spirit of Christmas.
Secondly, it was decided that support would be available to all of our players, coaches and volunteers if they were to ever need it. This struck the partnership with Men Matter Scotland, which has been great for not only the support on offer in a variety of ways to everyone at the club, but the community initiatives that were formed off the back of this, such as free community football & being able to support behaviour & attendance support students at a local high school.
On the park, the club has gone from strength to strength through the variety of teams we now have on offer. It all started though, with our Sunday amateur team. This then sparked a side which was originally our community team, now known as our Sunday Colts, who will be playing league football next season. More recently has seen the launch of our Over 35’s & Warriors teams with the 35’s debuting last Friday in their league, and the Warriors starting competitive football from September. We also have a team registered in the Mental Health & Wellbeing Football League in partnership with Men Matter, who were due to debut last year but this was pushed back to 2024. From next season we will see our Saturday morning side launching in partnership with our friends at Nethercraigs - NC Apollo will debut in the SMAFA, this team will then go on to become a Clyde Apollo team from 2025. A massive achievement for us at Apollo, was to launch our first academy side last year. Our 2013’s side have grew so quickly in their short existence and this is all down to the amazing volunteers involved with the team. More academy teams and initiatives to come in 2024?👀
Also off the park, we have been working hard to get the accreditation and memberships to assist the growth & ambitions of us all at the club. The big ticket item for us was to get awarded with the Scottish FA’s Quality Mark accreditation, which we were able to attain within 6 months! This shows the hard work being put in off the park by the committee and members of the club and will be a huge advantage for our future planning.
We have also been working closely with People Makes Glasgow Communities, where we have been working to reopen the derelict facility at Penilee and make it a facility to make the local community proud. We are working through the different stages of the process and hope to have the keys in our hands to ‘Apollo Park’ in the very near future.
This is just a summary of what the club has been up to in the last year, there is a lot that we haven’t had a chance to share, to be honest an all or nothing documentary would struggle to fit in everything that has been going on. What we can share though, is that this is only the beginning for Clyde Apollo Football Club, we will continue to grow and support as many people as we can and do our part to make football more affordable and accessible to as many people as we can. Our ambitions are still the same, and we will continue to work as hard as ever to see these become a reality.
Thanks to everyone for their support up to this point, we hope you have enjoyed it as much as we have💛.
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