Ex-Forest head of media says sports clubs are driving social change
- kamcavanagh1
- Apr 20, 2025
- 3 min read
Tom Rawlings, former ‘Head of Media and Communications’ at Nottingham Forest, says sports clubs are driving social change in their local communities.
Sports clubs and organisations in the United Kingdom were founded on the sense of community.
And while these clubs, particularly in football, have gone beyond just their local community and developed into worldwide hubs – community is still at the heart of it all.
According to the English Football League, almost 50 million people in the UK live within 15 miles of an EFL club.
Rawlings, who spent two months working at Nottingham Forest after they were promoted from the EFL Championship in 2022, is insistent that these football clubs are huge when it comes to driving change in the local community.
He said: “I mean, there's so much that the trust and foundations of these clubs do. I mean, they're teams that seem to be getting bigger.
“I mean, yeah, I saw how big that the Forest Community Trust was, and incredible work that it was doing in terms of, and this stretches from sort of a community, sort of football centre that it ran on the outskirts of Nottingham that, well, I don't think it was the outskirts.
“There was just a community hub for football pretty much throughout the week, seven days a week, from walking football for more elderly in the morning to sort of youths in the evening, that coming together.
“It just, it just shows that these clubs make a huge difference because they just bring the community together in terms of the support the teams.
“But more widely than that, it is just the sessions that they deliver in the schools, the sessions that they deliver in the evenings and weekends that nobody else is putting on for them, but the clubs are putting them on and it's driving change.
“Who knows what these young people will be doing?
What are other sports doing to make a difference?
He also spent more than a decade working in cricket at Warwickshire County Cricket Club.
Cricket and the Muslim community are intertwined, and Rawlings was able to see the impact that the Warwickshire Cricket Board could have on these communities during Ramadan.
He continued: “One of the best examples I saw with that, not necessarily with Forest, but with cricket, with the Warwick Cricket Board, as it was at the time that during Ramadan, which was, I think, around April, May time that the year it was introduced, they started doing Ramadan cricket sessions.
“And because of the time of year, the fasting was taking place, the breaking of the fast was taking place quite late at night. I think it might have been, even be later, more into summer.
“But they were putting on cricket sessions [from] 10 to 11am in the indoor centre, taxis were provided to the participants, who were all aged between 14 and 21 I think, so there were taxis from their homes to ensure that they got to the indoor cricket centre safely.
“And then from 10 to 11pm well, just before that, they would break their fast with the Iftar. And then from 10pm, it would be sort of cricket in the centre, that safe space allowing you to burn off sort of the food that you eat. And after breaking the fast and just coming together to enjoy cricket.
“I mean, that is transformational because you can't do that out on the streets at 10pm after the fasts [have] been broken.
“And so, yeah, that that was just a real hub of cricket making such a big difference”
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