No volunteers,
no football.
Every session, every fixture and every presentation night at this club is put on by parents and carers who volunteered. You do not need to have played, coached or organised anything before. You need to be willing to turn up.
Pick the job that fits your actual life.
These are the roles that keep the club running. Most of them are an hour here and there — and several can be done from the touchline you are already standing on.
Match-day helper
An hour, a few Saturdays a season
Get to the pitch early, help put out goals, nets, corner flags and the respect barrier, and pack it away at full time. It is the single most useful hour anyone gives this club, and it needs no experience whatsoever.
Kit and equipment
Around an hour a week
Look after one squad’s kit bag: washing rota, replacing what goes missing, keeping the ball bag pumped up. Ideal if you are at every game anyway and like things in order.
Team administrator
Half an hour a week, mostly from your phone
Be the person who confirms availability, posts the meet time and chases the two replies that never come. Everything runs through the portal, so it is messaging rather than paperwork.
Referee or assistant
Match-days, training provided
Younger age groups need officials every week. If you fancy it, tell us and we will point you at the qualifying course and support you through your first games. Referees are always short — this one changes seasons.
Photos, video and social
Whenever you are there
Take photos at fixtures and send them in. Match reports, player-of-the-match write-ups and honours posts on the club site all start with someone at the side of a pitch with a phone.
Fundraising and events
A few evenings a year
Presentation night, tournament days, raffles and sponsor packs. Fundraising is what keeps subs affordable — every pound raised is a pound families do not pay.
From helping with cones to running your own team.
Nearly every coach at this club started as a parent who stayed to help. Here is the route, in order, with nothing hidden.
- 01
Come and assist
Start alongside an existing coach for a few weeks. No qualification needed to help run a drill under supervision, and it is the only honest way to find out whether you enjoy it.
- 02
Clearance and safeguarding
Before you take any role with regular, unsupervised contact with children, the club arranges an enhanced DBS check through the FA and asks you to complete safeguarding-children and first-aid training. We start this early because it takes time to come through.
- 03
Get your coaching badge
Once you are settled, we will talk to you about the introductory FA coaching qualification and how the club can support you through it. Plenty of our volunteers arrived having never coached anything.
- 04
Take a session, then a team
Lead parts of a session, then whole sessions, then — if you want it — an age group of your own, with a syllabus and a lead coach behind you. Nobody is thrown in.
About the DBS check
A DBS check is a criminal-records check. For roles in football that involve regular contact with under-18s it is an enhanced check with a barred-list search, applied for through the FA. The club starts the process for you, covers it, and will chase it — you do not organise it yourself. It usually takes a few weeks, so the earlier you say yes, the sooner you can get properly stuck in.
Occasional help that is always supervised — putting nets up, running the tea urn, taking photos at a tournament — does not require a check. Anything hands-on and regular with children does.
Questions about checks or safeguarding go to welfare@romfordfc.com, or read our safeguarding commitment.
Tell us the hour you can spare. We will find the job.
Send us a message saying which age group your child is in (or none, if you are not a parent here) and roughly when you are free. Someone from the club will come back to you and match you to a role — no interview, no commitment on the first conversation.