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5th Annual Foundation Mental Health Tournament

Southampton win annual Palace for Life Mental Health Tournament.

The 5th Annual Palace for Life Foundation’s Croydon Eagles Mental Health Tournament took place last week. The event offers local people a chance to experience an exciting day of football with other like-minded people, who otherwise may not get the opportunity. This year we also had teams from other Pro Football Clubs such as Arsenal, Norwich and eventual winners Southampton.

All in all 8 teams battled it out in 2 groups with the top 2 progressing to the semi’s and then Southampton squeezed past Status in the final to claim the trophy.

Lisa Latona, from the Saints Foundation, summed up the impact events like this have and how they can kick-start bigger things for those who are able to take part: “Just wanted to say thank you for hosting the tournament the other day. We all had such a fab time. As mentioned we will be holding a tournament in August at Southampton FC training ground. It would be great if you could bring a team?!”

 

The fun-filled event was fantastically supported by a group of volunteers from BT. This initiative is a major part of the 3 year Premier League/BT Disability Fund, coming to an end this summer, that has helped the Foundation engage with some of the most hard-to-reach areas of our community. The volunteers were each allocated a team to take care of for the day and this made sure that all teams knew exactly what they were doing and made them feel supported at all times by the Foundation.

Nadine Honey, BT Senior Service Relationship Manager, told us: “Great cause, everyone was so friendly and welcoming,  it was good fun, professionally run and well organised. I loved spending a few hours with team ‘Status’, they made me feel really welcome and their spirit was infectious”

The Foundation’s Disability Manager, Michael Harrington, who oversees the Foundation’s Premier League/BT Disability-funded Inclusive Eagles programme, summed up what he thought the volunteers bring to events like this:

“These fantastic events are a pleasure to be part of but can be very demanding on manpower, so for the Foundation to have the opportunity to call on BT staff at times like these to offer us first-class volunteers is vital to allow us to continue the work we do that helps so many people who otherwise may not have access to these types of opportunities.”

 

Well done Southampton!

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