Brooklands Youth FC - England

Brooklands Youth FC - B13 - England

1. Tell us briefly the name of your club and where you come from, your history?

We are Brooklands Youth FC U13 Yellows (currently U12) and we are based in Colchester, Essex, UK. Our team was established in August 2023 so we have only played together for two seasons but what a two seasons we have had. As a completely new team we went out and won our very first match during our development season and we are now 12 matches into our first competitive season in C Division of the Colchester and District Youth League with 20 points to our name.

Brooklands FC was established in the late 80's and is one of the oldest grassroots clubs in Colchester. Since 2022, the club has experience massive growth and the club now runs over 20 youth teams with over 50 volunteer managers and coaches running the day to day training sessions for over 360 youth players.

2. Tell us what participating in the Dana Cup means for you and your team/s?

For us, Dana Cup will be a once in a lifetime experience. The club has never sent a team to an international tournament before so this is a first time experience where we are sure both players and coaches will learn a lot! We are especially excited for some of our players who have never been on a plane or left the UK before and it means a lot to us to give our youth players such an amazing opportunity to bond as a team, meet players from around the world, experience other football styles and of course play a lot of our own football as well!

In comparison to larger cities, we believe Dana Cup and Hjørring offer a much more football-focused and safer environment for our players.

3. What are your goals and expectations at the Dana Cup 2025?

As this is our first time participating it is hard to know what goal to set, so for us the main thing is taking part and having fun, but of course it would be nice to get a couple of wins! Another big goal of ours is for our players to experience something new and expand their horizons. As a separate goal for our club, we would love to connect with another club who might be interested in becoming our international friendship club for future collaboration.

4. Dana Cup supports Football for the Goals - it is a United Nations initiative that provides a platform for the global football community to engage with and advocate for the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We ask all teams to pick at least 1 of the Global Goals that they support and will play the Dana Cup, which goal does your team support and would like to play for? More information: Football for the Goals and Global Goals

The SDGs that are closest to our hearts are: Goal 3: Good Health and Well-Being and Goal 10: Reduced Inequalities. As a club we focus on Goal 3 by offering football and sports to as many youths in our local area as possible and for our team especially we focus on reducing inequalities by ensuring we have a diverse group of players on our team.