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Wrapping Up
Birmingham City launched their annual “Blues Give a Gift” campaign yesterday with a mass “wrapathon” of presents at St Andrews. Fans, staff and players came together to wrap presents donated by the club and local businesses to be given to children in hospital wards in the area.
Despite some of the doom and gloom around the club it was good to see so many people at the ground giving up their time to help wrap the presents. John Lewis Solihull sent £1000 worth of gifts along with their community liaison coordinator Sara Breen whilst bespoke investment management firm Quilter supplied things like XBoxes, DVD players and DVDs along with some help wrapping them up. The players chipped in too, with all the squad putting money in towards more presents whilst Blues fan Paul Duffy donated £215 he raised at an event.
It was good to see so many fans there helping too – along with myself there were representatives from Redditch Supporters Club, Smallheathalliance.com, the Disabled Supporters Club and Blues Trust. We were joined by players Wade Elliott and Paul Robinson along with Lee Clark who showed off his somewhat dubious wrapping skills to our general amusement.
Whilst there is undoubted good in giving gifts to kids at Heartlands and the Childrens Hospital I think it’s also important to underline how much this shows that the show is going on at Blues despite all the stuff going on off the pitch. I’ve said it before but the staff at the club like Rachel Williams (who organised the project) and Sarah Gould are a massive credit to it and it’s easy to see that despite the turmoil that morale is still high behind the scenes and that there is a real feeling of togetherness at St Andrews. It’s a bizarre spin-off but the continued long-term absence of people like Peter Pannu from the office has allowed the staff at the club to get on with what they do best and I think it would behoove any new owner to allow the good work done at the club to continue.
In a time when football in general gets lambasted for the greed etc that seems to surround it it’s good to see that at Blues at least the club are giving something back. I thoroughly enjoyed today and I hope that the presents we wrapped will bring smiles to some faces this Christmas.
Tags: Blues Give A Gift, Lee Clark, The Fans
14 Responses to “Wrapping Up”
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Well done, that is brilliant KRO4ever
I agree, it was an enjoyable day!
Brilliant
Wonderful! The club is part of the community – lose that and we really are doomed.
If only the sale of the club could be wrapped up too – alas, not in time for Christmas.
Well done to all involved,anything that helps sick kids has to be a good thing…
So lee clark struggled to wrap his did he . Did he use the wrong paper layout or no use the right tape ?
To be fair to Lee he said it was something his missus normally did and that he wasn’t very good at.
Paul Robinson was an expert though.
outstanding event well done guys. but can i ask in relation to your previous post did the blues trust actually contribute to this magnificent communial event or were they simply as you say “representatives”?
Well, two of their board were there all day, like myself, wrapping presents.
If that’s not “contributing” then I didn’t “contribute” either
It’s unfortunate that it’s the people that you mention, that do so much behind the scene, that have the most to lose if the club does slip into further financial difficulties. Let’s not forget Blues is not just a squad of footballers & coaches but also employs others, and CY, Pannu should realise they have a duty to those employee’s.
Exactly what a football club should be – a staple of the community with a social conscious.
So many of the big clubs have lost sight of this and are only driven by profit and greed. Dispite what is happening with the sale of the club it’s so pleasing the Blues are still attached to the community that they effectively serve and are not a nationwide glory hunter, soulless detached business entity.
Or despite even.
Daniel thanks for replying to the question of Trust involvement,curious thing to ask though amongst all involved.Indeed myself and fellow Board member Phil Brown were there on behalf of the Trust together with two of our members but in all honesty if any of us had been asked as individuals we would still have been there.This wasnt a PR exercise as im guessing the question was alluding to,but for the Record the Trust is a recognised Supporters Group and as such the Club invited all of those such groups to participate….It was an absolute pleasure to be involved
The saddest aspect was that many went on the club website (I think it was the club website bit senile not sure) and despite the positive energy and nature of this project, used it as an opportunity to insult Lee. I had to comment and say this is hardly the time and place. I haven’t been back to see if i got insulted too.