Meet the mighty Brentford Penguins
Allan Cockram: the life-changing Volunteer of the Year at the London Sports Awards. By Jade Craddock.
‘Volunteering has given me the best time of my life’ – words that ring true for most volunteers, but most volunteers haven’t also been professional footballers. So for Allan Cockram, who lived many people’s idea of the dream, playing for Tottenham, Reading and Brentford, in a career spanning two decades, it is telling that it is not football but volunteering that he gives this ringing endorsement to.
And while volunteering has clearly given much to Allan, he has given equally, if not more so, to volunteering, so much so that he was recently awarded Volunteer of the Year at the London Sports Awards, for his work with Brentford Penguins – a football club for players with Down’s syndrome that he established in 2017 and has grown ever since, after a chance but life-changing meeting with a child with the condition when Allan was working, post-football, as a taxi driver. Having built up a friendship with the youngster, which included playing football outside of school, Allan was devastated to hear of the youngster’s passing due to complications with Down’s syndrome, but it would prove to be a pivotal moment in Allan’s life.
‘It was just a moment in time when it really smacks you in the face and I vowed when I had a bit more time in the future I would explore Down’s syndrome a little bit deeper – hence the Brentford Penguins.’ But Allan has done more than just explore ‘a little bit deeper’, he has built a whole community that boasts teams for children and adults, as well as a space for parents and carers. ‘We started off with four kids, six and a half years ago and now we have forty-two kids and counting. The youngest is four and a half; the eldest is 26. We have our first Down’s syndrome coach and we have every DS disability within that because from the beginning we decided to have an open-door policy, where we never turned anyone away.’
Indeed, as well as the current teams – the Penguins (children), the Emperors (over-55’s men’s walking football team) and the Empresses (over-40’s women’s walking football team), Allan will be launching a fourth club in the summer for amputees. It’s a lot to oversee, but the highlights are clear for Allan – seeing ‘the development and happiness of all the kids. I would say that is the highlight, to see how these amazing children can flourish if they’re given the opportunity, because unless you give them the same chance as everyone else, then you’ll never know how much they can develop. They’ve been given a community where they are all the same, they can see a future and to be able to provide that we’re very humbled.’
Community is a word that Allan often repeats when talking about his work and the Penguins, and it’s one that is clearly central to his philosophy. ‘The children are one thing; we have two teams – the children, who just get on with it, but you’ve got the parents as well, so we’ve built a community for the parents where they can talk to people with common problems. And for me, I flipped my coaching manual from coaching to building a community. Football unifies us but community builds us.’
Part of that community has been Brentford Football Club, and as a former Bee himself, Allan has been delighted to have the backing of the club. ‘It says a lot about the club in general, that they care about the community. Thomas Frank and some of the players have seen our film, The Mighty Penguins, they’ve met the children. We’ve had Romeo Beckham and Neal Maupay come training with us, which is fantastic, and also Brentford in the Community, which is separate from Brentford Football Club, have really been supportive. The other day we were at the training ground; Brentford in the Community put on a training day and CPR training for the parents, which was amazing. To have the backing and recognition of Brentford Football Club and Brentford in the Community helps to spread the word and recognition of the children, so it’s been amazing.’
Allan, perhaps more than anyone, knows the power of football, but ‘it’s what football can provide for people’ that he treasures. ‘All of the things that we’ve done with the children over the past six and a half years outside of training, from travelling abroad, having a top-ten BAFTA film made about us, meeting famous people, going to Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant, being on national television – that’s what it’s done, it’s provided opportunities. And it all filters back to down football – a simple game with a ball, a rolled-up newspaper, or in the old days a pig’s bladder. The simplicity of the game has provided opportunities for the kids, so I’m really proud of football to be able to do that.’
Unsurprisingly, therefore, he advocates for greater access to sport for all. ‘Football, and any sport, that is available to as many people as possible is only a good thing. For me, I have an affiliation with all my teams because I have a heartfelt recognition of people that don’t get opportunities or sit on the fringes of society sometimes and I like to provide them an opportunity because I know how amazing football can be for mental health issues, physical issues, providing community. It’s that togetherness, the feeling of belonging to something that’s bigger than yourself that we all need, because that’s life, isn’t it, life is community, and that’s how you understand people and break down all sorts of barriers. So the more diverse the community that we bring together, the better the understanding.’
And it’s understanding that Allan speaks of when asked about what volunteering has given him. ‘We started Brentford Penguins because we wanted to start it, we started it for the love of it, and not wanting anything in return. You can’t volunteer and expect anything, because otherwise it wouldn’t really be volunteering. There was no expectation, it was just one day at a time, one step at a time. What it’s given me is the ability to learn something new. What volunteering gave me was being able to understand Down’s syndrome to a greater degree than most people.’
While he’s proud of winning the award and specifically for the recognition not for himself but his wife ‘who does so much behind the scenes’ and the volunteers ‘we’re blessed to have to give up their weekends’, his overriding message supports his desire for increased awareness: ‘For the children, parents, carers and siblings, all that they have to go through on a daily, hourly basis, really it’s recognition for them and gives me a platform to talk about them to a broader audience. So it’s great to win [the Volunteer of the Year Award] in my city, but the broader picture is so much bigger than that.’
Indeed, for Allan there’s still plenty of work to do, but as this award proves, Brentford Penguins is making its mark. ‘I think we are starting to tap on the window of the glass ceiling. More and more people are understanding about Down’s syndrome. There’s a long way to go but the more these children can be understood by the wider community and society, the more they can excel – and that’s my job; to show the world how fantastic these kids are.’ And his love for his young charges pours out of him: ‘Their love is their love; their laughter is their laughter; and their tears are their tears and I love that, that’s how it should be for all of us and that’s where the truth lies.’
With the success of Brentford Penguins, it would be easy for Allan to rest on his laurels, but as well as creation of the amputee team, Allan has big plans for the future. After a successful trip to Bilbao, travel is something that he’s keen to continue to explore: ‘Taking the kids away every year, abroad somewhere, where we can look at other DS communities around the world and we can learn from them, and vice versa, that would be amazing.’ But the one area that Allan really considers as needing improvement is for post-18 life, when provision for the children and their families is limited. There are no such limits to Allan’s dreams, though, as he envisions both a dedicated indoor facility, crucially with a further education programme.
‘We train on a “dog poo park” every week and my wife and I literally clean up the dog poo before the kids come training. We have anything between 80 and 100 people there every single weekend, which is amazing, but we need our own facility for all our teams, but certainly for the children, where we can provide something for them where they can be employed or a place to come every day that has a further education programme. When they get to 18, sometimes these kids, and parents, guardians, siblings, go through hell, because some are left at home, some can’t get work, and there’s a massive gap at 18.
‘The major thing for us now is to have our own indoor facility with a further education programme. Most of the kids are amazing cooks; so we could have our own restaurant for the wider community where the children can cook and be paid for their time. A lot of our kids are amazing in front of a camera, so there could be a media centre, where they can create their own YouTube channels or short films or interviews with famous people. Certainly a home economics programme where the kids can learn to be self-sufficient, where they can learn how to be on their own or with a partner. And then speech therapy, yoga or anything like that. We appreciate there’s a massive gap for these families and we need to fill the void. That’s my dream, but we just need someone to believe in it like I believe in it and, believe me, it will be the future for these kids.’
It’s hard to doubt Allan’s convictions, after all he’s already shown the power of football to create community and engender understanding, to offer opportunities and lifelines, to be a place of positivity and hope, and all as a volunteer. ‘Volunteering has given me my life; volunteering has given me the beauty of how the world can be; it’s given me everything.’ For a man who once played for England Youth, who lined up alongside Glenn Hoddle and scored goals for fun, that says an awful lot.