Almost everything a football club is built on is a barrier to somebody. The whistle. The rules. The tactics board. The expectation that you can hear the coach, follow the shape and stay on for an hour.
For children with complex disabilities, that adds up to a closed door, and the door tends to stay closed.
"Our girls and boys are unable to access traditional sports clubs, and for most this is the only physical activity they can be a part of," says Emma Oram, coach and secretary at Ashford Sensory Football Club.
Oram started the club in 2023 with Laura Smith after the pair trained with the charity Sense and the Kent FA. Smith works in special education. Oram has a background in special educational needs and is trained in British Sign Language. Neither of them set out to run a club. They set out to solve a problem they could see from where they were standing.
"I am very passionate about sport being accessible to all," Smith has said.
What they built looks less like a football session and more like an hour where football is possible. It runs at the Stour Centre in Ashford, on Thursdays from 5pm to 6pm for children aged 3 to 6, and Fridays from 5pm to 6pm for children aged 6 and over. There are no tactics and the usual rules come off. The balls are textured, light up or carry a scent, so a child can find them by touch, by sight or by smell. The goals are wheelchair accessible. Instructions come in British Sign Language as well as speech. Parents and carers play alongside, rather than watching from the side.
The coaching comes from female volunteers with special educational needs experience, with two parent volunteers now training up and two young coaches helping to run sessions.
At the end of their first full season, the children were given trophies. For most of them it was the first time they had received one for a team sport.
Earlier this year the club became the first sensory football club to partner with Her Game Too, the national campaign against sexism in football. "The work Ashford Sensory Football Club is doing to provide opportunities to people who may not get a chance to play otherwise is really important," said the campaign's director, Lucy Ford.
In July, at the Kent FA Grassroots Workforce Awards in Maidstone, Oram was named disability pathway coach of the year. She did not keep the credit.
"This is for all the children that come to the club, who were told they would never play football," she said.
