Meet the Grenfell football team raising spirits one match at a time

And so it has come to this. A Sunday afternoon on a playing field in west London and the finals of the Men’s Intermediate County Cup. Grenfell Athletic vs The Vine from the Middlesex County Football League Sunday Division 2. A chance for silverware at the end of a campaign cruelly curtailed by the Covid crisis. A football, a white painted spot and 12 yards away, a goalkeeper. Penalties. Sudden death. The Grenfell player strides towards the ball. Leather on leather. And then…

No one in W11 struggles to remember where they were on the morning of 14 June 2017. Rupert Taylor was on holiday in Gibraltar. Taylor, who ran the community centre closest to Grenfell Tower, took a phone call from a friend in the early hours as fire raged through the 24-storey residential tower block in North Kensington. Taylor had played football in the shadow of Grenfell as a child. He had relatives who lived in the tower. By the time the fire had burnt out, 72 residents had lost their lives, hundreds had lost everything they owned and a chasm was torn through the community’s heart.

Taylor booked the first flight home. ‘I drove in as soon as I got back — I’ll never forget the smell of burning. The sadness…’ At every turn, residents walked the streets, pleading for information about their missing loved ones. Nine of the children who attended the youth club Taylor ran had died. He, like many others, got to work helping however and wherever they could. The centre became a hub for donations and care packages.

‘A man was walking around outside the centre,’ recalls Taylor, now 34. ‘He looked very lost so I invited him inside and we got talking. He told me he’d lived in the tower. He’d lost everything. Then he told me that a few years prior he’d lost both of his parents. He said it felt like history repeating.’

Taylor asked the man, who didn’t want to be named for this article, what had helped him process the grief of losing his parents. ‘The first thing that came out of his mouth was, “football”…’

At that moment, barely a month after the tragedy, Grenfell Athletic Football Club was formed. Taylor got to work letting the community know that if they, too, felt lost, there was a new brotherhood congregating on the pitches of a park nearby. Today Taylor works with children with disabilities across Kensington, Chelsea and Westminster City Council. He’s good at organising. Good at galvanising.

‘We held open trials on Wormwood Scrubs and Linford Christie Stadium,’ he says. ‘We’d have passers-by trying out. If they were connected to the community, they could play.’ The man who Taylor befriended outside the centre that day no longer plays for the side. ‘He manages his own side now. He’s come a long, long way…’

Grenfell Athletic threw its arms around a broken community. ‘We were all grieving,’ says Taylor. ‘We’d do a minute’s silence before every game. We were doing this to heal, but to remember the lost, too. Some would say it was too soon, but the need from the community was evident.’

Grenfell winger Joseph John was a resident of the tower. He’d got out just in time, carrying his baby and disabled partner to safety. Shockingly, four years later he remains in temporary accommodation. Before the tragedy he worked as a chef and in construction. ‘If I’m honest, I’m struggling to get back on my feet,’ he says.

John, now 30, credits the football team with giving him ‘focus, family and security’. He grew up in his native Trinidad and Tobago within a footballing family, even representing the nation himself at under-17 level. ‘When I was in a hotel after surviving Grenfell, I was told about the team that was being set up,’ says John. ‘I’ve been playing with them since the start and they’ve been there for me throughout all my darkest moments. They make me feel safe.’

Grenfell finished fifth out of 12 in their first season in the Middlesex County Football League. That summer they headed to Italy, at the invitation of semi-pro side Lanciano, which wanted to help out. For all of its modern ills, football has a proud tradition of looking out for its own. For most of the players, it was the first time they’d spent any time away from the area since the night of the fire. ‘That’s when the camaraderie was truly formed,’ says Taylor. The following season they lost just one game. They won promotion, as well as the Middlesex League Cup.

At 39, central midfielder Kwasi Frempong is the senior member of the side. A childhood friend of Taylor and also a youth worker, Frempong played semi-pro football for years, turning out for solid local sides like Harrow Borough, Northwood and Beaconsfield.

‘I’ve seen what the club has given to the players — they’ve grown in front of me,’ Fremprong says. ‘They’re more vocal, they have more of a sense of freedom to express themselves. I’ve played for a lot of clubs, but football has never mattered to me like it does pulling on the Grenfell shirt.’

The team made the decision to play in green. Grenfell is an adaptation of the words ‘green field’ — the tower block was built on a green before the sprawl of the city took over — and the colour has become synonymous with remembrance of those lives lost.