[ Background in football ]

My background in football is really as a player. I started at a youth team in Hastings called Spartan and played there from 6 to 16 before moving to Hastings United where I played in the reserves and a little in the first team. Then, when I was planning to go to Uni down in Southampton, I played for half a season at Andover.

In the end, I didn’t end up going to university as I got a job that I’m still in now and started playing for Westfield. I joined at 17, I think and haven’t left! I’ve been a player, a coach, the manager for a couple years and now chairman.

It’s a bit of a mad story really, I’ve done every role you can think of - from centre half to backup goalkeeper to groundsman, and now chairman. I’ve had a go at everything.

[ What are your responsibilities as chairman? / what does your day-to-day look like? ]

We're growing quite quickly, but we're still quite a small side. Chairman kind of involves everything really. From booking training venues to signing players to paying fines, paying the bills, cutting the grass - day to day really is just whatever needs doing. You have to kind of get on with it. Whereas, if you may be a couple of levels higher, you’d have people underneath you for lots of these jobs. At Westfield, we’re a family club and have a core of 6 people - my dad’s the treasurer and my brother’s the first team manager - and we all just jump on whatever needs doing at the time.

It can be challenging, all of us have full time jobs. It’s hard to explain but people just kind of make time and we’ve built a rapport with each other where it just works. Say, if the pitch needs cutting and I've got an hour's lunch break, I'll go and do an hour, and the next guy might have come down and cut the rest on his lunch break.

So we kind of just fit everything in and it’s also really social, we try to make it so it’s not a ‘chore’ - there’s always a couple people there, always having a laugh. It’s not a ‘routine’ - at the end of the day, if someone can’t make it, they can’t make it - we’re volunteers and everyone’s understanding of that.

We’ve got 11 youth teams and 6 adult teams. So it’s a full on experience. We have a ‘youth secretary’ and ‘adult secretary’ - they sort out games and all the things around this- At the end of the day though, it (the responsibility) lies with me because my name’s above the door!

[ How is the balance between your role at Westfield and your full time job? ]

I tend to do football stuff sort of after 5 o'clock - when my work day finishes. My boss and everyone are good as gold, they know all about what I do outside of work and as long as it doesn’t impact my work, they’re fine with it.

I’ve got a 4 year old and a wife but we try to have a good work-life balance. I don’t bring it home with me and on Saturday’s, it’s football day, my little one comes with me and we’re all there as a family. She loves it and it’s really nice.

[ Has Westfield been at the same level since you’ve been there or have there been promotions/relegations? ]

We’re in Step 7 now (11th tier), 7 leagues below League Two (4th tier and the start of fully professional football). We were at Step 6 but were relegated 7 years ago due to ground issues - basically our ground didn’t meet the requirements. Our pitch was 2 meters too short and we didn’t have floodlights.

Now, we’ve got a brand new ground, a new stand and permission is in motion for the lights. So this year is a massive year for the club to get back to what we call ‘senior football’ (Step 6), because at the moment we’re playing ‘intermediate standard’.

To get back to senior football, you need the floodlights, you need a stand and barriers, etc. Everything is done, just the floodlights are the final piece of the jigsaw. We’re pushing really really hard for that.

[ Was there a possibility to move to a different ground (and avoid relegation)? ]

To give a little back story on that, the ground was first talked about in the ‘90’s - it was reliant on a piece of land being sold to a development company. Anyway the land sat dormant for nearly 20 years and I think in 2021, it was finally sold!

So, moving grounds was not really a possibility, because we didn't have any timescale for when the ground would be done. We could have looked into going to Hastings United or Bexhill or other local clubs, but we might have ended up being there for 10 years. That's just not sustainable because you're not taking any revenue from admissions fees, behind the bar, or anything like that.

I think if we’d done that, the club would have ceased to exist very quickly. When I took over as chairman, I think Hastings required something like £15,000 to ground share with them. We wouldn’t even make this, well, we definitely wouldn’t, if we were playing there.

So, as much as it would have been lovely to stay in there (Step 6), I’m glad that the club didn't, because I don’t think it would have been feasible.

[ What are the main expenses? ]

The main expenses are probably training venues - especially winter training venues. We don’t have floodlights obviously and the weather is starting to turn now. The last thing you want to be doing is ruining your pitches by training on them throughout the winter in the wet season. I’d say you’re probably looking at the best part of ​​£2,500/month for the 17 teams we’ve got across the club.

Of course, there are your normal electric and water costs. We’ve got two ‘bases’ at the moment - a youth pitch with its own changing room and our main pitch where the first team plays. So we’ve got double the electric and water bills!

Those, along with affiliation to the leagues, to the FA, the cups and all the player registration are the main expenses. Each player registration is around £3-5 so you have to be sensible there too.

[ What about travel costs - what are the distances in the Mid Sussex Premier Division? ]

Our furthest journey is probably an hour and 25 minutes, so not too bad at all. The players car share and you’ll probably have 4 or 5 in the car.

We don’t pay wages and unless it’s an extraordinary circumstance, we don't pay any expenses. The players are here because they enjoy playing for Westfield and we look after them in other ways. We do all the training kit, playing kit, tracksuits, everything like that. We do all the washing at the club too, everything is cleaned and set out ready for the next training. So, although we don’t pay players, we try to do things in other ways to make it accessible, cost-effective and to make it more professional.

[ Besides gate receipts and concessions, where does the revenue come from? ]

Sponsorships are a big thing - sponsorship and donations are massive. We've got some very, very, good sponsors that are very generous and have helped us massively throughout.

Anyone below the first team pays ‘subs’ as well. Adults pay £6/game and the youth teams pay £30/month. We’re without doubt one of, if not the, cheapest club in the area for youth (some go up to £100/month). This is to cover referees fees, training costs, and playing kit. We’re not in it for profit or anything, we just cover the costs and make sure we can provide the best experience for each player that plays for the club.

[ How have things changed since 2022 - when Steve Cook became majority owner? ]

Steve's one of my good friends from outside of football - it just so happens that he's an ex-Premier League player as well!

He’s helped a lot on social media - when he was at Nottingham Forest, our social media blew up, we went from 600 followers to 11,000 overnight after we put out the video. I was going on BBC, Sky Sports, doing like 5 or 10 interviews a day, it was crazy!

We went as a team to a Nottingham Forest match and I looked around the crowd, someone was wearing a Westfield shirt! We sold something like 250 replica Steve Cook shirts in a week, it just took off. So, the whole profile of the club just grew massively overnight.

He’s given us a lot more professionalism as well. He’s bringing bits from his playing experience and helping with playing kit, boots, all those kinds of things. Those are the main things. Of course he also helps with funds but it’s not like he’s plowing thousands and thousands of pounds in, but if something needs to get over the line, he obviously helps with that.

[ I’m assuming he had some influence with a couple of your recent signings? (Westfield signed Cook’s former teammates Dan Gosling and Charlie Daniels this summer) ]

Yeah, obviously, those signings don't happen without Steve. They haven’t played yet and they’re working full time as coaches at Watford. I know Dan’s injured currently but there’s talk of Charlie playing next week.

Again, that will be massive for the club to have Charlie playing. He’s played something like 200 times in the Premier League, won goal of the season, a bunch of player of the season awards at Bournemouth. The experience and the know-how those guys bring to a matchday squad is incredible. I don’t think people realize how good they actually are. The way they use their body, the way they use the ball and even the way they strike the ball is just on a different level to anything that non league players do.

[ You mentioned getting back to Step 6 and senior football, what are some of the other goals for the club going forward? ]

Obviously step one, like I said, is to get back into senior football. Once we're in senior football, we'd like to progress definitely to Step 5 as a minimum, Step 4 would be great but I think that’s probably a longer term goal.

Under the right environment, teams can go very quickly from Step 6 to Step 5. There’s not a huge ability gap between Step 7 and Step 6 but there’s a large difference between Step 7 and Step 5. There’s a lot of money involved at that level - players on hundreds of pounds rather than tens of pounds. There’s some very big clubs in those leagues. We play quite a few during preseason and the games are usually 5+ (goal difference) because they’re fitness, ability, team shape and all those things are better.

Another main goal of the management group (Jack, Steve and Graham Knight) is to have a 3G pitch at the club. This will allow the whole club to become self-sufficient. If you have that, you can hire it out, we can have all our own teams training there, we can have it open to schools and the community. (In theory) the facility could be in use from 9am to 10pm. It would create some jobs in the village for people interested in sport, people to maintain it, bar staff, all those things.

We might hit some opposition because people don’t like change, that’s just the truth. In villages, it’s an elderly population who’ve lived there for 40, 50 years and wouldn’t like having floodlights on hours a day, etc. But those changes can be good for the village because it would bring people to the local shop, to the local butchers, to the local pub, etc.

And we just want to continue growing the youth teams. We would like to have a minimum of two teams at every age group. We currently have one at every age group right the way from U7 to U18 but it would be nice to have two. To do that, you need the facilities and unfortunately you just can’t rely on a grass pitch.

In Germany, for example, I’ve played there on ash pitches, but I believe they’re all 3G facilities now. I’ve been more recently in Berlin and Munich and the amount of 3G and community facilities available is amazing. Unfortunately, this is not the case at the moment in the UK. The Hastings area, a town of ~48,000 people doesn’t have one full size 3G pitch.

We’re friendly with the local cricket club and would like to build a ‘clubhouse’ that we share to hold functions, end of the season presentations, all those kinds of things. But again, that’s probably a quarter of a million pounds and not something we’re going to be able to do on our own without grants, fundraising or other funding.

[ Do you have womens or girls teams? ]

We don't currently but it will be in place by next summer. We’ve had talks with a local club and want to have a pathway going all the way up to adults. We have a handful of girls playing in our youth teams but will have dedicated girls and women’s teams from next summer.

[ What is the best part about being involved in grassroots football at this level? ]

Giving back. I think I've taken a lot out of football. I enjoyed my playing days without realizing what goes on on the other side, so to be able to provide a facility and a team for 163 children below the age of 16 and 176 adults, I take real pride in that.

A lot of people do a lot of talking, saying they’ll do this, that and the other but to be able to actually do it is something I take real pride in.

And I just enjoy it! I love cutting the pitch, I love getting involved in the coaching, helping out, playing sometimes still - so, it’s also a big plus on the enjoyment side.