FURD
A Sheffield firm has helped cure a major headache for Football Unites.
Football Unites has been invited by UEFA to tour Portugal with our inflatable football game, ‘Streetkick’, as part of the anti-racist, fan-friendly programme organised by FARE, the Football Against Racism in Europe network.
The plan was to send the game ahead by courier to Porto, where three Streetkick events will be held on the days of Euro2004 group matches. The events are designed to encourage fans and locals to play together in a series of friendlies, as evidence of the unifying influence of football.
However, we hit a major snag – none of the freight firms contacted provided any form of packaging, essential to transport both the inflatable, blower, generator, transformer, and PA.
In stepped Andrew Lovell, managing director of Sheffield Packaging Services Ltd, who met up with Streetkick Co-ordinator, Simon Hyacinth. Andrew was so impressed with the work of the project that he offered to export pack the game free of charge, and persuaded freight specialists Davies Turner and Co Ltd, along with Portuguese partners KEC Portugal to transport the game from Sheffield to Porto, again at no cost.
Streetkick Co-ordinator Simon Hyacinth said: ‘We were starting to worry about how on earth we were going to get the game over to Portugal, and we’ve been really touched by Andrew’s willingness to help us out’
The Euro2004 Streetkick tour will also include an event in Guimaraes on the day of the Denmark-Italy game, before moving on to deliver 4 events in Lisbon.