‘Can people in football focus more on what they can do to help rather than what they can take? We’d be in a better place for it’ – Gosport Borough chairman Iain McInnes

But he is now becoming 'bored' of clubs so consumed with their own issues rather than what they might be able to do to help the most needy in the communities they serve amid the pandemic.

Gosport have been doing all they can to ensure families requiring support in the area receive it in the form of food parcels through their Feed a Family in Need campaign.

Since launching last summer, demand has grown dramatically and the club are visiting up to 150 homes in the town every week - a scary statistic of the damage that coronavirus continues to cause.

It's seeing members of the community hit such hard times so closely through the project that is making McInnes particularly unimpressed by the monetary pleas from some within football.

Borough discovered they could receive up to £27,000 in grant funding last week as part of a £10m pot made available for steps 3-6 of the 'non-elite' game from the Government’s Sport Winter Survival Package

And although welcoming the step taken to ensure that financial support has been made available further down the pyramid, McInnes would prefer clubs to do whatever they can for the needy in their areas - as opposed to complaining about what they are not receiving.

The Borough chairman said: 'The notice coming through to say the Government has found a way - or it’s been lobbied hard enough - to actually provide clubs at our level with some kind of grant is welcome news of a sort.

‘But I’ve got to be honest and say, ‘should it really be a priority? Should it be a priority with what’s going on?’

‘I welcome it to a point but I’m also not hugely convinced, as I’ve said before, that football at this level should be needing, requiring, demanding major government support.

‘I’m missing football like crazy, I really am, but the truth of the matter is if you’ve got to use that money to truly enhance the football club, to truly help supporters and people in need then it’s money gratefully received.

‘I’m bored about reading about clubs who are saying, ‘we can’t survive now because the money we thought that was going to be given to us as a grant is going to be given to us as a loan’.

‘This is a once in a lifetime pandemic, we hope, nobody knows quite how to deal with it.

‘But football just does not make enough noise about how itself tends to supporters and its community rather than just continually being concerned about how it pays its own wage bill, and I’m really bored with it.'

McInnes says Gosport will explore what support they are able to receive via the Survival Package funding.

But they'll only access finances if it means they can keep up the work with their campaign and ensure the community still have a club to visit when 'non-elite' football returns.

‘The money is grateful but if we take money it’ll be to improve the club and not to support over-inflated wage bills,' added McInnes.

‘Can people in football focus more on what they can do to help rather than what they can take? I think we’d be in a better place for it.

‘The fallout from this is going to be dramatic, really dramatic.

‘You might not have Covid cases as such, I’m sure you’ll always have a few around the place, but then those people find themselves without income support, they find themselves with businesses that have either fallen by the wayside or jobs that are no longer in existence.

‘They have to have a friendly face, a place that’s not going to ask any questions, a place that’s not going to be judgemental, a place that’s actually going to do good with them and not make a good deal about it and, hopefully, with the reintroduction of football a place where they can come and forget about their worries for a few hours a week.

‘That’s what our job is, pure and simple.'