‘We are a family’: the former Spurs footballer running a team for kids with Down’s syndrome

Allan Cockram is a former Tottenham Hotspur and Brentford footballer, but that doesn’t mean he’s rich. “If only!” says the 58-year-old from west London. “We got kicked up in the air on muddy pitches for the damn love of it.” When he was playing, footballers weren’t paid multimillion-pound salaries.

Cockram always wanted to be a professional footballer and made his Tottenham debut in the old First Division (predecessor of the Premier League) against Watford in 1984. “It was almost gladiatorial,” says the former midfielder. “That excited nervous feeling when you’re in the tunnel, waiting to go out.” After leaving Spurs, he played for St Albans City and Brentford, then became a player-manager at Chertsey Town before hanging up his boots and retraining as a firefighter.

A chance encounter with a friend’s son in the early 1990s changed his life. The boy had Down’s syndrome. “I was his friend,” says Cockram. “We played football together. We built a bond.” The boy died of complications relating to Down’s in the mid-1990s aged just 14. “I vowed that one day I would set up a football club for people with Down’s syndrome,” says Cockram. “Fast-forward 20 years, and I had the opportunity to do it.”

You see the kids flourish. The friendship they have for each other is crazy

He’ll never forget their first session in 2017. He had contacted DSActive, an organisation supporting sports initiatives for the Down’s syndrome community, and they put a notice in their newsletter. Cockram rented a community centre in west London and paid six months’ rent upfront, at £80 a week, out of his own pocket.

About eight people turned up to that first session. Now, Brentford Penguins FC has 20 young people with Down’s syndrome, aged from four to 18. “We