BBC1 Inside Out – 30th January 2017 – Crawley Old Girls by Viola Films – Directed by Sam Supple.  Watch here: https://vimeo.com/215030978

After previously being involved in an Inside Out programme involving Crawley Town supporters, Carol Bates messaged Sam Supple in August 2016 to see if he was interested in telling the story of the Crawley Old Girls.  Being the first English Football League Club to have introduced new football sessions for older ladies to learn to play football, this was a new concept and one which Sam thought was a brilliant idea. After plenty of communication over the coming months, Sam came to visit the COGs’ training session and was excited by what he saw and who he met.  This was the start of a period of filming, getting information together and organising/shooting scenes at various locations.   A great deal of hard work by Sam and his team was involved to get the story of the COGs over in the right way and the result was an amazing piece of film which was aired on January 30th 2017.   This brilliant showcase of what we had achieved, inspired and encouraged so many more women to take the plunge and start up new groups, for which we’ll be forever grateful.  The number of “old girls” who started to learn to play football increased dramatically after the programme was aired and still is, to this day.

The main part of the filming was done on Thursday 13th October where it started at the home of Carol Bates, moved on to Tilgate Bakery, which is owned by Jane Kirkham (one of our COGs) and then moved on to the Checkatrade Stadium, where interviews were filmed in the home dressing room.   The evening was topped off by a match on the Checkatrade Stadium pitch against our friends (and local rivals) from the Sussex Coast, Lewes Ladies’ Vets.

The evening game was filmed under the floodlights and 3 games of 20 minutes were played with Lewes beating the COGs 4-1 (we’ll beat them one day!)

We can’t thank Sam and his team enough for all the hard work, and the effect that the film piece had, in encouraging new “older” ladies to learn to play football!