The Club

The Women’s, Men’s and Youth teams are big players in the leagues, but the heart of the operation is the Academy – the social and educational activities that make an immense contribution to improving life in North Edinburgh.

Hence the boys, the shoes, the chat, the banter. Something so small, but so important.

‘Saying you’re glad to see people when they turn up is a tiny thing but is so vital, explains Kenny. ‘For most of the kids who come here, it can be a very novel experience to feel welcome anywhere. We need to create a sense of family here – especially for our members who aren’t lucky enough to have a fully functioning family at home.’

North Edinburgh is a tough part of town. The constituency profile bristles with social, economic and health related indicators all at the wrong end of the scale. According to the Scottish Government’s Indicators of Multiple Deprivation, some parts of this area are in the 5% of poorest communities in Scotland. That in a city which only trails behind London in terms of economic vibrancy and growth.

But don’t let any thoughts of Benefits Street style stereotyping get in the way of your view of North Edinburgh.

From the prosperous days when the docks boomed, through a Trainspotting era when North Edinburgh became an international by-word for drugs and related mayhem, apparently rivalling the Bronx as a model for urban terror, through to its current mixed economy of cappuccinos and tattoo shops, this area has carved out its own image.

Kenny has no illusions of the strengths and the struggles of this community. He’s a Muirhouse boy and feels privileged to be able to use his skills and experience in sport and youth work to help put something back into the community.

‘The people who live here don’t need to be told how tough they have it or how much crime there is.’ Kenny warms to his theme easily and often, if enthusiasm could solve social problems then Kenny would have put an end to deprivation single handed. But of course that’s the trick. Enthusiasm CAN solve social problems, or at least set in motion a train of events that can go some way to making things better.

‘There’s a huge amount of goodwill and generosity here. When Mikaeel Kular went missing at the beginning of 2014 the whole community were shoulder to shoulder. Kids that the police knew only as someone to keep an eye on were out there doing their bit. Our job is to harness that goodwill, give people a way to get involved in a positive way.’

If you were being casual and lazy you’d see the work of the Academy as about keeping the kids off the street, that slightly dismissive description of youth work that summons up images of trendy vicars and ping pong in church halls.

To say Spartans Academy is keeping kids off the streets is like saying Lionel Messi is good with a football. True, but a bit inadequate as descriptive writing.

The impact of Spartans Academy is subject to constant evaluation and monitoring. Even though Spartans is largely self-financing, it is dependant on rigorous public accountability. But two numbers jump out. There has been a 30% fall in petty crime around the area since Spartans opened their facility five years ago, and in that time there has been two acts of vandalism. Two. And one of those was an Alex Ferguson style assault on the managerial dugout at a moment of high stress. The perpetrator apologised and provided a block of voluntary hours equivalent to the replacement value of the glass.

Kenny works on the basis that one pound spent on positive intervention gets seven pounds’ worth of return in social benefits. The old medical joke is that if you think prevention is expensive then you should see what treatment costs. The same is true of creating circumstances which can take people away from crime, drugs and desperation. There will be costs, and there will be failures, but it’s better than mopping up, or locking up the consequences of doing nothing at all.

‘Of course we have failures,’ says Kenny, ‘it would be strange if we didn’t. But we never give up and we never, ever turn anyone away. We’re on the case of trouble makers. We leave them in no doubt when their behaviour is out of line. One of the reasons why kids come here is because they feel safe. So we’re not about to turn a blind eye to behaviour that disrupts that sense of security.

‘But we never bar anyone. Where will they go if we bar them? All you do is put someone who is at risk of getting into trouble at even more risk of getting into trouble. What people own, they don’t vandalise. What people are part of, they respect. This sense of community ownership is vital to what goes on.

‘One day when we had high winds this winter, a huge bin blew over. Paper streaming everywhere across the pitches,’ Kenny remembers, ‘before I’d finished swearing, under my breath of course, a couple of the boys had started picking up the mess.

Treating two boys who remember to take their shoes off with respect is repaid in actions like that.