Following my interview with Eastbourne Town FC’s Pier Pressure fan group, I move along the South Coast to find out what’s happening at another progressive football club, Whitehawk FC from Brighton’s eastern suburbs. I catch up with the club’s Vice Chair, Head of Commercial and Marketing, and Matchday PA, Kevin Miller.
Brighton has long been the liberal capital of the UK, with around one in eight residents identifying as gay, lesbian or bisexual, and it is also home to the country’s largest Pride festival. This inclusive culture on the south coast has also filtered through to its local football clubs. Nearby Lewes CFC was the first football club in England to pay its women’s team the same as its men’s. But it’s another football club in the eastern end of the Brighton & Hove urban area that has been attracting a lot of attention in recent years.
Nestled in a lee of the South Downs, overlooked by windswept trees standing at awkward angles and the slow-moving silhouettes of dog walkers, is the Enclosed Ground, home of Whitehawk FC. When I first visited in 2017, I was greeted on entry by Half Man Half Biscuit’s Joy Division Oven Gloves playing over the PA system, which was a positive sign and a step back from the traditional pre-match crowd-pleasers. The attendance in the sixth tier of English football that day was nudging 300 and what was most remarkable was the complete absense of swearing. The fans created a family-friendly environment with European-style chanting and the rattling of keys at set pieces, which the fans call ‘key moments’.
The Whitehawk Soars…
It was in 2009/10 season when Whitehawk FC, until then a regular non-league club, started to attract a more diverse crowd of supporters. Former Brighton & Hove Albion midfielder Darren Freeman became first team manager, supported by former West Ham defender George Parris in the first season. Freeman led the club to three promotions in four seasons, plus an infamous FA Cup run in the 2015/16 season. This kickstarted Whitehawk’s now-famous ‘party atmosphere’, and with it came the inclusive message. Today, this atmosphere is all purveying, and there’s a new generation of students from nearby Brighton and Sussex Universities joining the chorus, according to Kevin Miller, the club’s Vice Chair, Head of Commercial and Marketing, and Matchday PA.
“I suppose the core fan base – the ‘Ultras’, it’s an ironic term – reflect the city as a whole; tolerant, inclusive, and accepting of all,” Miller explains. “The club adopted the Ultras’ ‘footballforall’ mantra and a few years ago allowed them to put the inclusive statements on the main stand steps.” Miller believes that the non-league set-up enables local clubs to foster a real connection with their fan base as familiar faces gather at each home game, which blurs the lines between club and supporter. This connectivity between club and community became particularly acute during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Whitehawk FC ran a number of virtual initiatives with other clubs, including Guernsey FC, Raith Rovers and Dulwich Hamlet, raising thousands of pounds for various food banks and mental health charities during the pandemic. Hawks’ first match back in 2021 after a winter of lockdowns, included a ‘Community Day’ of Whitehawk FC fans versus Guernsey FC’s mainland-based supporters and featured former England and Liverpool goalkeeper, David James. James appeared as a brand ambassador for energy firm Utilita, whose ‘Football Rebooted’ campaign aims to repurpose more than a million pairs of football boots and spare them from landfill.
Despite being located in the largely affluent south-east of England, the Whitehawk Estate was one of the most deprived areas in the UK as recently as the 1990s. Whitehawk FC set up ‘Hawks In The Community’ in partnership with local youth centre the Crew Club, running programmes for people of all generations, which is helping to drive positive change in the area.
Whitehawk FC’s stance on diversity and inclusion reflects the ethos of Brighton & Hove as home to a large LGBTQ+ community, Miller tells me. In early 2019, the club was approached by broadcaster and diversity champion Dr. Sophie Cook and former Brighton & Hove Albion player Guy Butters with an idea to put together an LGBTQ+ game against an all-star team of ex-Premier League stars. So, during Pride weekend of 2019, the ‘Rainbow Rovers’ – a team of LGBTQ+ players from around the country – beat a team of ex-pros 5-2. The ex-pro team had included Paul Walsh, Keith Gillespie, Lee Martin and Lee Hendrie. Rainbow Rovers is now amalgamated into the wider Whitehawk FC stable. “Rainbow Rovers shirts have sold around the world, and the club are rightly proud of what we’ve achieved, and with the full backing of the sports governing body, the Football Supporters Association, Kick it Out, Football v Homophobia, and so many more, we can take the message of tolerance and inclusion around the country,” Miller adds.
Miller believes that non-league football offers more freedom for expression and less factionalism as fans are free to mingle. “It’s been interesting to see students at the ground for the first time, brought up on the Premier League and unaware of the freedoms that non-league can offer,” Miller concludes. “We try to be as inclusive as possible. The Ultras even have a no-swearing policy, and you’ll often hear them shout their indignation at an official’s decision with the chant, ‘The Referee’s a Referee!’ and with the drums, the ‘key moments’, the disco ball dangling from the home stand end, ‘The Din’, the atmosphere created sums up the joys of the beautiful game at this level – warm, friendly, a little rough around the edges, but with a heart of gold.”