Last Updated on: 14th May 2021, 04:13 pm
“Aden Steelers is a local Sheffield and Rotherham BME football club for young children between the ages of 7 and 18, which has just recently entered the Sunday junior district league, which is the biggest junior football league in Europe.
We were formed in 2015, by a group of middle aged men who would take their kids to a local five a side pitch to play recreational football every Saturday morning when they were off work. This then spread around the local communities through simple word of mouth and we eventually started getting more and more young players come and join us.
Upon this, we decided to set up a more organised recreational activity and went on FA coaching courses paid for by ourselves to gain more knowledge and expertise that we could pass on to these children. From then onwards we had more and more BME kids turn up, and this became a regular activity for kids to enjoy on a recreational basis every Sunday afternoon. We had up to 136 kids turn up at one point.
From this, we decided to push ourselves even further, and selected an age group that we felt we had the strongest players in, so that they could play football in a more of a competitive environment. We decided that we would enter an in U12s squad of 15 selected players from all over Sheffield & Rotherham that had been to our recreational sessions. This was a difficult task, as I am sure you can imagine.
Having selected the special 15 we went ahead entered into the Sunday and junior district league for south Yorkshire and became a FA chartered standard club.
We struggled with many aspects, in particular financially, but nevertheless we eventually managed to get a team registered under the club name Aden Steelers FC. Having had a difficult start we lost our first 3 games, but then went on a unbeaten run for the remainder of the season, and came 2nd in the league, and losing on penalties in the cup final.
It has been an overwhelming and unbelievable achievement for everyone involved in Aden Steelers FC to have come so far. Due to the access we featured on Sheffield Live TV, IMAN FM and also on BBC radio Sheffield, as well as them doing a short video that was publicised on social media.
Following the success we held trials for the current season. We had a massive turnout, and ended up entering 5 different teams. All Five teams this season have done exceptionally well by gaining promotion, and our U12s even managed to win the CUP!!. Once again it is has been an unbelievable achievement, and we once again invited back to BBC Radio to talk about our success. We are again going to be holding trials for next season, and are anticipating that we may have to enter more teams once again, as our Facebook page has been inundated with interaction from the public.
The season was a massive success. We won our CUP for the u12s and all everyone of our teams got promoted also. We recently held trials and have an overwhelming amount of players turn up. we are this season entering 9 teams and also a senior team over 18. we are now officially FA CHARTERED and still have our recreational training on Saturdays where it all started 3 years ago.”
Anise – Football Director