Birtley Town Football Club awarded The Howdens Game Changer Programme. 

Birtley Town are delighted to announce that the club has been awarded The Howdens Game Changer Programme. Labelled as The Game Changer, the grant supports grassroots football with improved clubhouse facilities that can be are at the heart of their community. The club was selected as one of the 450 lucky clubs to receive a fantastic new kitchen through the Howdens Game Changer Programme which was launched in April 2023 to improve clubhouse facilities at grassroots football clubs across the UK.


Scott Brown – Vice-Chairman of the club’s Senior section said:
“We are relieved to finally get this project up and running. We haven’t been able to use the existing kitchen in the pavilion for a number of years and this programme gives us lots of options going forward. The club has grown significantly in the last couple of years, in terms of the number of junior teams and attendances at our Men’s and Women’s first team games.

Our volunteers and committee members have worked tremendously hard to ensure our bar and catering facilities are open as much as we possibly can, it’s really added to the experience for our junior games on a weekend. There’s a lot of unseen work goes into that side, whether it’s ordering stock, cooking the food or ensuring we meet the legislation of the food hygiene standards.  Having both the kitchen and the bar inside the clubhouse isn’t ideal, so this project will allow us more flexibility with our facilities. We now have an opportunity to develop Wadgey’s bar whilst ensuring we still have the facilities for our catering side.

We hope this will be the first of a couple of exciting announcements in the next six months. I’d like to thank Gateshead Council for their support, the council helped us obtain the original building plans and provided the letters of support that we needed to get this award. It’s great to see first-hand how the Howdens Game Changer Programme is having an impact on grassroots football across the country.””

Supporters can learn more about Howden’s Game Changer Programme here.