The new EFL Trust Chair has been looking ahead to the year to come. Liam Scully took over the role in late 2021. He has been talking about the work being done by community organisations all over the country.

The EFL Trust is the charitable arm of the EFL and was established in 2008 to oversee the work of EFL club community organisations, such as Brentford FC Community Sports Trust. It is responsible for distributing core funding from the Premier League and The PFA to each CCO and highlights community work done by clubs across the country. Our Trust has worked with the EFL Trust for more than a decade and many projects are still ongoing.

A Q and A with Liam was conducted by the EFL earlier this season. He talked about his interest in the role and what he could bring to it. There was a particular reference to the COVID-19 pandemic and the way football responded.

"One thing we can do as we look back on the last 18 months is be incredibly proud of Football Clubs for the way they’ve reacted and how they’ve contributed to keeping communities safe and together, helping to deal with the challenges that people have faced," he said. "We’ve seen great stories of Football Clubs distributing resources or ringing up the fanbase to have conversations with them and seeing how people are. We can look at this from a national perspective and we can look at the reach, but fundamentally, this boils down to lots of one-to-one interactions and that’s where Football Clubs and CCOs have done an incredible job.

"Football Clubs on a Saturday at 3 o’clock are a phenomenal place for community cohesion and bringing people from all different walks of life together. We lost that for a period of time, and I think what Football Clubs did really well through their CCOs is manufacture or artificially recreate those opportunities in a sincere and heartfelt manner."

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