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The
Club
Although
Lotus Sports Club was officially registered with the FA under
this name in 2005, it was formerly known as ‘Manor Athletics’,
when it first started in 1998. The club originally started
with a single coach (founder member) but now boasts a staff
structure consisting of over 12 people, with 9 members coming
from the youth structure.
The
club was established 10 years ago to provide young people
from Manor Park with opportunity into mainstream football.
It was recognised by the founder that within Newham most of
the clubs were based in the regions on the south side of Barking
Road and that clubs were predominantly consistent of non Asian
players, which is still the case today.
Many
of the well known Asian run clubs in London have no formal
infrastructure attending to the youth development from 5 years
and upwards and only serve 10+ and adults. Lotus believes
that young people should be involved in multilateral development
from the age of 5 to ensure that the fundamental skill can
be developed, which we believe will make our club unique when
promoting ethnic communities into mainstream sport.
Lotus
Sports Club is NOT an Asian only club and welcomes
young people and adults from different cultures and walks
of life. During its short existence the club has worked with
hundreds of children and adults from Kosovo, Sri-lanka, Pakistan,
Bangladesh, Malawi, Nigeria, Russian, West-Indies, India and
many more regions. The club does NOT promote nor take
any religious names or beliefs within the club. The senior
club is named ‘Manor Park United’ after the location
where the club was formed, which is run by former ‘Lotus
SC’ players.
The
club has worked with a number of organisations such as ‘Kick
it Out’, Football Foundation, Newham Youth Services (Little
Ilford Youth Zone), BBC, King Baudouin Foundation, Leyton
Orient Community Sports Program and many other organisations
to promote equality in sports for young people from ethnic
and displaced communities.
The
club hopes to recruit young people from the ages of 5 and
upwards and build strong relationships between cultures and
with the parents, as without the parents support the youngest
of talent can be lost. This is also the age where racism and
any form of discrimination is near enough nonexistent.
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