How football helped refugees find a home in ReadingSubhead: Inside Sanctuary Strikers: the Reading football club rebuilding lives, hope and a new community
Meet the extraordinary man forging community, hope and opportunity through sport
Made up of refugees, asylum seekers and local volunteers, Sanctuary Strikers is one of Reading's most remarkable community sports clubs. I spent an evening with the team to discover how football can create friendship, belonging and hope far beyond the final whistle.
(This is an edited extract from a story originally published by The Reading Reporter. The full version is available on Substack.)
“No one wants to live in a foreign land. You want to be where you were born. You want to be connected to people that you grew up with, the people that know you.”
So says Tomson Chauke, the co-manager of Sanctuary Strikers, a football team founded to help refugees integrate with the community in Reading.
On a bitter midwinter evening like this, it’s hard to see who would want to live in a place so cold and dark. The wind bites. From the sky to the soil everything is grey and brown.
Yet slowly they arrive. Tomson is first. He’s a big, broad, force of nature with a smile to match. Tomson grew up over 5,000 miles away on a sugar estate in southern Zimbabwe, in a place called Hippo Valley. The wildlife here in Prospect Park amounts to a few squirrels and ducks. While he sets up a series of portable floodlights to illuminate tonight’s training session, others join us.
Not many, mind. It’s Sanctuary Strikers’ first session after a Christmas break, and the bad weather has put off many of the team from playing tonight. Tomson is trying to cajole more players into action, fielding calls and Whatsapps, shouting at figures across the park to hurry up, juggling people. Eventually he decides it’s time to get on with it.
“Come on! We’ve all got Christmas turkey bellies!” bellows Tomson, and we’re off. He leads the hardcore of Sanctuary Strikers into a jog and then a series of stretches and sprints. There’s Ramsey, a tall, graceful athlete from Sudan, and Balde, a lean and slight man from Guinea-Bissau, plus Tomson’s teenage son – and The Reading Reporter too. Next week’s attendance will be better, thankfully.
But tonight there’s another new recruit – a young asylum seeker who’s turned up for the first time. He’s only recently arrived from north Africa, and through broken English tells Tomson that he has no clothes for football other than what he’s wearing. Which isn’t ideal, because he’s soon slipping and sliding around, his trainers near useless in the wet mud.
No matter though, because Tomson will sort him out with a pair of boots for next time; and sporting excellence isn’t the primary aim of Sanctuary Strikers anyway. Simply being here, among his new team-mates, is a success in itself.
It might be cold and dark, but living in the home of the Premier League allows them to dream. It is a foreign land but it offers them the chance to escape the troubles of their past. Memories that make their eyes lower towards the ground, and their voices quieten when you mention home.
Want to read the full, inspiring story about how Tomson and football helped these refugees find a new home?
Read the full story for free on Substack, where I reveal how an extraordinary man is forging community, hope and opportunity through sport. You'll find many more stories like this about Reading too.
Read more: A night with Sanctuary Strikers – the football team helping refugees rebuild their lives
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Chris (The Reading Reporter)
Some of the Sanctuary Strikers football team in training at Prospect Park. The team was set up to help refugees integrate. Picture: The Reading Reporter