Fitba tops for school kids

Ghanaian's are crazy about football.
In February I sent round an email to a fairly large circle of people asking if they had any old kids football tops that they would be happy to pass on to the kids in the Koforidua, expecting I’m maybe come back with 20 or 30 tops to hand out to a few people. How wrong could I be. The response was unbelievable and my poor parents ended up with a living room full of 306 items of football gear, including 201 various replica club shirts, 19 pairs of boots, 48
pairs of replica shorts and 6 pairs of replica socks. On top of this, Alves
Primary School provided a full set of strips, Eskmill Boys Club of Penicuik provided
two sets and Glasgow Rangers FC youth team supplied another set.. A couple of likely lads can be seen below sporting the colours of their favourites for the last time.
Many of the donations are clearly of great sentimental value, including two
toddler tops dedicated to Aberdeen’s 1983 Cup Winner’s Cup and 1984 League and
Cup Double triumphs, several to Henrik Larsson’s brilliance at Celtic and
Barcelona, two to 60 years of the legendary Penicuik Hearts, some to misty memories of Scotland’s last visits to the World Cup, various to times spent in Australia, Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Malta, Italy, Monaco and Turkey, and not to mention one paying homage to the Cellar Bar in St Andrew’s.

The generous donators in full were:
Alves Primary School
Eskmill Boys Club
Clydesdale Hockey Club (Don Sinclair, Richard Jack, Russell Bradley, Steve Maitles, Johnny Mackay)
Gregor & Ruaridh
Ben, Sarah & Friends
Alistair Moles
Adam Jacques
Lorna Sibbald & Daniel
Alastair McWhirter
Thomas, Angus & Friends
Kris
Evin
Michael
Cadell
Graeme & Sheila
Rangers FC
Jill Morton

As well as this we brought back £400 in donations from a well known Edinburgh employer towards more strips. What on earth to do with them all? Well I spent many happy hours sorting them into roughly colour-matching sets and decided to give one or two sets to some of the schools with teams of boys and girls. My good friend Benedicta (local education officer) helped select the most worthy schools and worked with Aidan and I to distribute them fairly, with Benedicta always reminding us to insist on the girls getting a fair shot!

Agavenya PS & JHS





Bonya PS & JHS



Asikasu PS & JHS



Jumapo JHS


Densuano PS



Eskmill Boys Club of Penicuik provided two full sets of shirts, shorts and socks – really good quality strips – that they’d recently won the local Salmon Cup in. We
donated these to Bonya Primary and Junior High School, who now proudly display the newspaper clipping of Eskmill Boys Club on their notice board.

Bonya and Agavenya Schools arranged a friendly tournament to celebrate their new
kits. In two thrilling contests played before a raucous capacity crowd of chanting, dancing school kids (and subject to frequent pitch invasions), the girls’ .match went to penalties and was won by Agavenya, in the boys match a strong Bonya line-up edged past a nippy skillful Agavenya side 1-0. All the kids seemed really proud to step out in the new kits





Eskmill Boys Club http://www.eskmillfc.co.uk/EFC-Teams/u14-team

There are still more strips to hand out and Benedicta is on the case, so I’ll post up more photos when I get them.