Schoolboy footballers team up to raise over £1,000 for New Forest charity

A FOOTBALL match and quiz night organised by a group of local secondary schoolboys has raised over £1,000 for a special needs charity.

Noah Andrew, Alex Brash and Seth Woodcraft from Arnewood School and John Devlin from Highcliffe School were the main organisers of the event, which is in its third year.

Money collected has been donated to SCARF, a charity based in the New Forest which organises regular term-time and holiday activities for children and young people with special needs and their families.

The full 90-minute football match was played at Fawcetts Field in New Milton on Monday, and was followed by a quiz and raffle during which the boys doubled their £500 target.

Seth said: “Thanks to the spectators’ generous donations we managed to raise £450 from the match alone, which almost broke our target straight away. We were pleased to have 120 spectators for our match.”

Noah, who was team captain for one of the sides said: “It was a close game all round for the whole 90 minutes.

“The Redheads gained a 1-0 lead, which was equalised by a penalty in the first half. No further goals were scored in the second half, so the match went to penalties.”

Seth added: “Seven penalties were taken by each team and it had everyone on the edge of their seats right until the end, when Dominic Renouf from the Redheads took the winning penalty.”

New Milton Mayor Cllr David Rice-Mundy presented the Redheads with the trophy. He said: "I am extremely pleased that these young men organised this event in order to raise money for SCARF.

“It is not uncommon to see young people being portrayed negatively in the media. However, these boys are a credit to their families and I am very proud to have them in our town.

“Despite the cold, their performance was spectacular and the support was terrific. Well done to everyone who took part.”

Regarding the quiz, John said: “Like the match, the quiz evening was a huge success. It became very competitive between adults and children, although inevitably the adults won.

“Huge amounts of raffle tickets were bought so we ended up raising £180 from the quiz evening alone.

“Thank you to the clubhouse for hosting the event and to Alex Brash for gathering as many raffle prizes as possible.

“After adding up the money from the quiz evening, the football match and our online donation page, we managed to raise £1,087 overall which is way beyond our expectations.”

Alex added: “We would also like to thank all the companies who were kind enough to donate prizes for the raffle free of charge.”