Football kit return plea has good cause at heart
Published: 00:01, 02 September 2013
A football club has come up with a novel way of solving a kit shortage – offering a shirt amnesty.
Range Rovers FC estimates it has more than 50 missing tops which means it has more than 20 incomplete kits.
Now past and present players are being offered the chance to hand back the garments guilt free.
For each one that is returned, the club will donate £5 to the Dannyboy Trust.
The charity was set up in memory of Island soldier Daniel Holkham, a former Range Rovers player, who was killed on duty in Afghanistan in March 2010.
The shirts could be anywhere. In the bottom of former players’ wardrobes, in former managers’ garages or hung on walls.
Eddy McEntire, chairman of Range Rovers for the past eight years, said in these difficult financial times it is getting increasingly hard to find sponsors.
He said: “The present cost of a full kit is close to £500, when actually we have all those old kits and, if we had them back, obviously the teams would be able to use them.
“What happens is, especially with the younger children, the first shirt that the boy plays in they probably play for Range Rovers and they normally take the shirt home and they keep them as souvenirs.
“That’s one of the reasons. Some of the players have just left the club and forgotten to give the shirt back.”
Founder Andy Hill discovered the extent of the problem when he was collating their stockpile of sports wear at the end of the season.
More by this author
Lewis Dyson