European good luck is an integral component of Aberdeen Football Club’s legacy.
Two stars adorn the club’s crest, a sign of the team’s achievements in the park versus those on the mainland.
The AFC Community Trust was not to be outdone. It scooped its second European award last week, winning at the Uefa Grassroots Awards to add to the recognition they received from the European Clubs Assocation for their Dementia Friendly programme.
All this was achieved without a hub to work from. But that is about to change, with the new training campus at Cormack Park due to open at the end of the month. Its benefits will not be felt just by the Aberdeen first team, its successful women’s side or the youth academy. The trust will use Kingsford as a platform to enhance its already burgeoning reputation.
Steven Sweeney, operations manager for the trust, is excited about the opportunity to move into his home on October 31.
Sweeney said: “Kingsford will benefit us significantly. On the pitch Aberdeen have achieved everything we have over the last number of years with no facilities. The first team have those challenges and the youth academy have those challenges.
“AFC Women are close to winning the league again with no facilities. For the community trust we’ve relied on partners to provide facilities because we’ve had no facilities.
“This will provide us with a wonderful opportunity to develop netpainting capacity and work even more with the grassroots clubs that we have worked hand in hand to obtain this recognition.
“We can use it as a community club to improve public health and engage with some of those hard to reach, or as we prefer to call them, easy to ignore groups. We can push forward Aberdeen FC being in the community and here for the city and region.”
Amid the celebration of the other 54 member countries, who had chosen their own country’s club, the Dons were named a professional football club at the UEFA grassroots football awards.
The award recognizes outstanding local paintings and program execution for a wide diversity of participants. The trust’s collaborative paintings with the Scottish Football Association are cited as an example of the most productive practice, with a total of 20,402 participants benefiting from its programmes in 2018-19.
Sweeney added: “It’s wonderful that the North East of Scotland is being recognized as there are many clubs with more resources than us. But the key message is that it is about other people and collaboration. There is a wonderful sense of network in the North East and that has helped us obtain this recognition.
“Many clubs across Europe are doing a job, but UEFA has recognised us and we are pleased to receive this pat on the back. But we also recognize that it raises the bar and we also need to continue and do more over the next five years. .
Sweeney joined Aberdeen six and a half years ago and took the opportunity to leave his post at St Mirren, where he worked with its network service and set up its in-house charity. Before that, I was a physical education teacher, but I was in demand. expand their opportunities to make an impact on the lives of young people.
He added: “On July 1, we were just celebrating our fifth birthday, so we are very young; If we were kids, we’d just be starting out as number one, so I’m looking forward to where we’re going to be. when we get to high school. “